Cloudbreak
by Jacqueline Albright-Beckett
Summary: The streets of Seattle are kept safe by Dean Winchester, vigilante justice and local superhero by night. After he meets the enigmatic Guardian Angel he discovers some startling things about the nature of reality and how he is tangled in its weave – all while there's an art thief to catch for his brother and a city that needs saving more than ever before. (Dean/Cas AU)
1. Chapter 1

FILENAME: CLOUDBREAK20131216

"Woah. There's a lot going on here, Ash." _The visual wobbles; the thin glowing lines of the heads-up display in the lenses of the glasses take a split second to catch up. Lines, numbers, text, all constantly shifting depending on the focus in the center of the lenses._

"You'll get used to it. And I can always take readings out that you don't use." _A hand appears, gesturing in the vicinity of several components of the HUD. _"Altitude. Power reserves. Facial recognition. Summary of everything happening on the police waves, sorted by either proximity or severity, whichever you're feeling."

_The visual shifts again. _"And what if I break the glasses?"

"Don't. They're not your run-of-the-mill Oakleys." _A finger taps the lens; the HUD immediately identifies the fingerprint as Ash's._ "Higher resolution screen than most smartphones. They'll record video and sound and bounce it to the cloud. They'll polarize in sunlight, just mirror at night. And correct your astigmatism."

"I don't have –"

"Yes, you do." _The visual shifts to the fitted gauntlet at the wearer's wrist. In addition to the stabilization thruster, it has an additional screen with input settings._ "No voice-activation yet, because I don't have the data to isolate your voice from wind noise. You want to change anything or look something up, that's your machine."

"What's Cloudbreak?" _A finger taps the word on the corner of the screen._

"That's what I named the software. The brains of the thing, if you will."

"That's the whole computer?"

"Hell no. You wouldn't be able to get off the ground with the computer it takes to get you there. Some of it's here –" _the visual shakes, as though the wearer has been whacked on the back – _"just the bare necessities. Processors for the split-second flight decisions. Failsafe for the fuel cells. Everything else – GPS, altitude data, that syncs from the cloud. Thus the name Cloudbreak."

"Excuse me. Fuel cells? Ash, is this rig powered by radioactive waste?"

"Can't fly on Duracells, man. And it's not technically waste until you're done with it."

"No. Absolutely not." _The wearer begins to undo one of the gauntlets._

"Relax, Dean. It's shielded. Exhaust is neutralized. An entire week of nonstop use will net you about as much radiation as a visit to the dentist – and your Quick Healing will take care of that, easy."

"And what if something explodes around civilians? You think of that?"

"Yes, actually." _The visual suddenly shifts to a fume hood containing a fuel cell. The HUD analyzes: 0.247g 238Pu. There is a sharp crack and a brilliant flash of light; a hand flies up to shield the wearer's face_. "Any leak, any at all, four failsafes kick in with the neutralizer. It'll make a hell of a firework, but no fallout."

_A long pause._ "And you say I can fly with this thing?"

"Dean. You can fly with this thing."

"Awesome."

"You wanna give it a test drive?"

* * *

><p>Seattle looked very different from above.<p>

Dean was used to the birds-eye view, of course – it was something of an occupational hazard – but he'd never had to try navigating from that vantage point before. Streets were not exactly labeled for top-down viewing, and landmark buildings rarely had distinguishable roofs.

He cut his thrusters to land lightly on the roof of an apartment building. The hum as they powered down for the night made Dean think of a luxurious stretch after a long workout. He laughed softly to himself as he fished for the key to the roof's door. Not even a week with it, and he was already personifying his gear. He'd be naming it next.

The studio loft's overhead lights were out, but the large room glowed blue and white with the dozen computer screens that were now playing videos of the test flight he'd just taken, overlaid with streams of numbers that Dean could vaguely understand.

"That was tight," Dean heard Ash say, and he spun, unable to control the grin that spread across his face.

"Yeah it was. What was I clocking?"

"Top speed? Somewhere around sixty. You could do eighty, easy, if you had to." Ash took a long swig from the can of energy drink he was holding. "You see him?"

Dean blinked. "See who?" he asked innocently.

Ash tossed the empty can to the side and shot Dean a look. "Don't play dumb. He's the entire reason you wanted to fly."

"That's not true." It was what had given him the idea and the drive, certainly, but it wasn't the entire reason.

"What are you actually going to do when you meet him?" Ash pressed as he threw himself into one of the desk chairs.

Dean shrugged. "I just wanna talk to him. He can fly and he shrugs off bullets like they're nothing. You know how rare Twinners are? I've met exactly one. You just don't get two powers unless you've augmented." He gestured to his thrusters. "And aside from Sam and Dad, I've never met another Quick Healer, if that's what he is."

"Your face is red," Ash pointed out. "You're either lying or cold."

"Cold," Dean replied, too quickly, but now that he was paying attention to it again, he realized how true it was. "I'm gonna need to get some motorcycle leathers or something."

Ash coughed. "I know you're going for the whole sexy rebel aesthetic," he pointed out, "but it rains three nights out of five."

"Point," Dean conceded grudgingly. "Gore-Tex it is."

Smirking, Ash leaned back in his chair. "You're gonna need a moniker, too."

Dean blinked. "What?"

"A name. You know, 'Window Washer by day, Vigilante Justice by night: Dean Winchester is...'" Ash gestured at Dean to fill in the blank.

Dean shook his head. "How about we skip the theatrics and stick with 'Dean.' It's how all the cops already know me anyway."

Ash scoffed. "It's a bird, it's a plane...oh, no, wait, it's just Dean."

"I am 'just Dean.'" Dean started to unfasten the thrusters from his wrists. "I've been 'just Dean' for years now. Because of 'just Dean,' there hasn't been a single rape in Capitol Hill in months." Dean held up the thrusters. "And 'just Dean' just got some upgrades."

* * *

><p>Dean had first seen him three months ago.<p>

The sun had set over the gray-green waters of Elliott Bay as it widened and became Puget Sound. Evening rapidly darkened the sky as his crew gathered on the rooftop of the Washington Mutual building. The WaMu building, with its fifty-five stories, usually took a full crew of four two days to clean the windows, rappelling down the sides in stages or in the slower but marginally safer hanging scaffolding. They'd made good time. Dean had been on the verge of giving them a few hours off the next morning to finish the job after lunch when movement had caught at the upper corner of his eye.

_Eagle_, his mind had helpfully supplied, and he turned to look – bald eagles were not particularly rare but they were still a minor thrill to see, and he was surprised one was flying so near the city. But as he focused, the dark silhouette had been far too large to be an eagle, and entirely the wrong shape. His jaw dropped at the same time that Kevin had pointed and asked "What is that?"

It was not long until, listening to the police bands as he slowly drove what he considered to be his beat in his car, the police had given the winged shape a name. "Guardian Angel left us a package in Pioneer Square," they would say. Or, "Guardian Angel says he's holding a rapist in custody." And though Dean kept a close watch on the alleyways and streets he had determined to be his responsibility, he kept one eye to the sky, without exactly knowing why.

He was rewarded with the occasional glance, hardly more than a blur as The Guardian Angel flew by, doubtless on his way to some disturbance that he would be able to quell before police could navigate their way there. Glimpses while he was hanging from the belay lines on the side of a building were rarer, but once the Angel had flown close enough for the wind of his passing to cause Dean to swing slightly from his ropes, though he was gone before Dean had the opportunity to register anything more than the tan of his overcoat and the black of his...wings, for lack of a better word.

Ash hadn't been able to pull up any information on the Angel, aside from brief mentions in police reports; his brother Sam had been able to provide even less information, since the Angel usually left any crime scenes before Sam or any of the other officers arrived. No one had ever spoken at length to him. The elusiveness of it all played in the back of Dean's mind like the chords of a half-remembered song, for no reason Dean was able to determine.

After Dean had lost a mugger in a foot chase through Capitol Hill, leaning against the corner of a building to catch his breath, he looked up on a whim to catch only the flare of that tan overcoat at the corner of a building. _If I could fly_, he remembered thinking, _I could catch every son of a bitch that tries to run _and_ get up there to see who The Guardian Angel really is_.

He'd mentioned it to his roommate a few days later, to which Ash had replied with a lazy "give me blank check and a week."

* * *

><p>His thigh holster was too tight. Dean briefly considered landing to adjust it, because Ash was still working on perfecting the hovering algorithm, and then decided against it. He could deal with the ragged changes in altitude for the thirty seconds it would take.<p>

He did not expect the action of leaning forward while in his precarious hover to cause him to somersault forward in the air, though he probably should have. Limbs akimbo in an attempt to halt his roll, Dean took a deep breath and looked around, hoping no one had seen that.

People on the ground rarely looked up, especially when it was drizzling like this, and so he didn't expect anyone to have noticed his gaffe, but when he raised his eyes his breath caught at the silhouette against the dark gray sky on the roof of a nearby building. The tan overcoat and the wings, half-folded, were unmistakable. And the man was facing Dean, head cocked slightly to the side.

Completely unintentionally, Dean had found The Guardian Angel.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Dean leaned forward, this time engaging his thrusters so he would travel instead of simply spin about an erratic axis. The Guardian Angel stepped back slightly to give him room to land but otherwise didn't move, blinking against the wind Dean's thrusters kicked up.

Dean took a cautious step forward, removing the frames of his heads-up display so he could see without water droplets interfering. His thrusters, detecting he was grounded, powered down into standby, leaving them surrounded only by the soft patter of raindrops and the susurrus of the city around them.

The Guardian Angel licked his lips and rolled his shoulders back as he took a breath. "Hello, Dean," he said, his voice like old leather. "It figures you'd find a way to join me."

Dean furrowed his brow. "How do you mean?" he asked.

The Angel waved a dismissive hand. "Nothing. Forget I mentioned it." He stepped closer, peering at Dean's gauntlets. "Interesting. How do you control the ionization?"

Dean shrugged, resisting the urge to take a step back. "No idea. I just fly the thing. Ask my engineer." His eyes were pulled from the ill-fitting suit and crooked blue tie to the black curves extending over The Angel's shoulders, and he drew in a surprised breath. "They're wings. Actual, honest-to-God wings."

"What?" The Angel looked startled, the feathers of the wings ruffling, then he relaxed and the feathers laid smooth again. "Oh. Yes." The wings extended very slightly, as though being shown to a greater advantage, raindrops running off them in tiny molten beads of silver.

"So...Chimera?" Dean had heard of Chimeras, humans who expressed physical attributes of other species; they were even rarer than Twinners, and the statistical improbability of what was standing before him made his mind boggle.

"Chimera? No." The Angel shook his head, eyes falling to the ground as though hesitating to continue before looking up again and meeting Dean's gaze. "I'm an Angel of The Lord." Dean could hear the capital letters of the title.

The eye contact felt too intense to maintain, but Dean couldn't look away, his mind groping for a response. "There's no such thing," he finally managed, and wanted to wince.

Surprisingly, The Angel smiled at that, a soft exhalation through his nose that could have been laughter supplementing it. "Always so quick with that conclusion," he said, almost to himself. As though realizing what he'd just said, he cleared his throat and looked away. "But true, here – or as nearly as I can tell. There are no other angels here. Just me. Strange. One would think..." He shook his head and returned his gaze to Dean. "My name is Castiel."

"Castiel," Dean said slowly, trying to ignore how aware of his heartbeat he was with those impossibly blue eyes seemingly staring right to the center of him.

Castiel smiled again, though it was mostly in the wrinkles around his eyes than with his mouth. "But you can call me Cas. If you want."

"You already know my name." Dean deliberately didn't make it a question, not sure it would get an answer no matter how he phrased it.

Castiel nodded. "I do. Your name isn't a secret in the streets, and this isn't the first time we've –" His eyes suddenly snapped into a distant focus. "Altercation on Second and Bell. At least one of them has a firearm." He brought his gaze back to the present with a glance at Dean, expression almost unreadable except for one eyebrow raised an infinitesimal amount. "Race you."

Dean shook the frames of his HUD to flip the temple pieces back out and slid them onto his face. The world snapped back into sharpness – Ash had been right about the astigmatism – and thin glowing lines resumed their constant flow of information.

"You're on," he replied, twisting to run two steps before leaping from the side of the building.

* * *

><p>Had it been more than four blocks, Dean was certain he'd have built up the speed to leave Castiel reeling in his wake. He would have to talk to Ash about the acceleration on this thing.<p>

As it was, his timing was near-perfect; Castiel had landed in front of the two young men, one of whom had just brandished his weapon in the way of those who simply carry a gun to intimidate, and they had both immediately tried to bolt the opposite direction, only to find their way blocked by Dean as he cut his thrusters and dropped the last two feet to the street in front of them.

The empty-handed one began shouting incoherently, pointing wildly at the one with the gun...who, eyes wide, brought his gun up, aimed at Dean's chest.

"No!" Castiel bellowed, reaching out.

In the strangely stretched mosaic of instants that followed, several things happened before Dean could blink twice:

The man, panicked, squeezed the trigger.

The muzzle of the gun flashed.

The gun flew sideways out of his hand, as though slapped by some unseen force.

Dean closed his eyes, knowing what was coming and not wanting to witness it.

A hot twist of pain blossomed out from the impact in Dean's left shoulder.

Dean staggered back, instinctively clutching his shoulder as he opened his eyes again to glare at the assailant.

"You son of a bitch," he growled through clenched teeth, right hand coming away from his bloodied shoulder and falling to his holster. It was still too tight, his mind incongruously reminded him, but before he could draw, Castiel had seized the man's head in both hands.

"I could break your neck," he said in a low, dangerous tone, "or you could keep struggling and break it for me."

"Here." Dean reached into the pants pocket in which he kept his zip ties, wincing as he pulled at the tattered muscles of his shoulder. "Turn him around."

With a deft movement Castiel managed to do just that, and though the blood on his fingers made the zip ties slippery, Dean fixed the man's hands together before kneeling to do the same to his ankles, for good measure.

"Sirens," he grunted as he rocked back on his heels, not particularly wanting to stand back up at the moment.

Castiel nodded in agreement as he thrust the shooter down to land hard on his backside on the street. "Dean. You're hurt."

Dean waved his hand dismissively, clenching and unclenching his left hand. The shock had begun to force the pain to retreat, just a dull onslaught that spiked as he tried to roll his shoulder. "Gimme a minute."

"Dean –"

"I said, gimme a minute." Dean fished around in his jacket pockets before coming up with a gum wrapper. Not perfect, but it'd do. "Make sure no one touches his gun."

Red and blue flashing lights spearheaded a throbbing headache as Dean gingerly unzipped his jacket, swearing at the bullet hole. He'd just bought the thing, and now it needed a patch. The hooded sweatshirt and tee shirt beneath were stuck to his skin with blood, already clotting and thick, and Dean peeled them away just as a police officer strode up to him.

"Evening, Officer," Dean managed as he looked up.

"Winchester." The officer visibly relaxed, then gestured at Dean. "Didn't recognize you with the new getup. You going pro?"

"Something like that." Dean grunted and he slapped his hand over his wound again. The officer didn't seem particularly worried. Dean raised his head to survey the scene, but even with the aid of his HUD to translate the chaos around him, he couldn't see Castiel.

"Guardian Angel bolt?" he asked, probing the edge of the wound with his fingers.

The officer's eyes narrowed. "You working with him?"

"No. Just...showed up at the same time." Almost there; he could feel the edges of the bullet as his body worked to expel it from his tissues.

"He usually doesn't stick around. Wouldn't be surprised if he's watching somewhere, though." The officer craned his neck as though to scan the rooftops. "You have a bullet for us?"

"Yeah. Sorry. Ran out of specimen bags."

"I've got one right here." The officer held open a baggie; Dean deftly deposited the bloody bullet and gum wrapper into it, careful to not let his fingers touch the bullet. He was always so surprised at how small bullets were in relation to how much pain they could cause.

"Thanks, man. Appreciate it." The officer sealed the baggie and thrust out a hand to help Dean up. Dean took it, levering himself to his feet as he pressed at the skin where his wound had been. Knitting flesh always itched horribly for a second or two, but scratching it never made any difference.

"You get his gun?" Dean asked, rolling his shoulder back experimentally. He'd be sore for a while, but it'd do.

"Yup. The usual?"

Dean nodded. "The usual. I was never officially here."

He swiped a thumb over the panel of his gauntlet in the pattern that would activate his thrusters. It was immensely gratifying to see the expression of astonishment on the officer's face as Dean lifted effortlessly away, and Dean didn't bother to hide his grin as he rose above the lower buildings and sped off.

* * *

><p>Castiel caught up to him as Dean cut his thrusters on the roof of a drugstore in Capitol Hill, landing in a crouch, his wingbeats kicking up enough wind to scatter the debris around him. Dean's breath caught at the sight, and as the wings snapped shut behind Castiel's back, a not completely unrelated tremor in Dean's knees forced Dean to sink down to settle on his heels on the roof before he fell.<p>

"Are you all right?" Castiel demanded, crossing the distance between them in a few strides and kneeling down.

"Yeah. I'm fine." Dean reached for his hip pocket as he rolled back to sit, not sure he could maintain his balance much longer. "Here." He shoved a few bills into Castiel's hand.

"What is this for?" Castiel asked, staring at them.

Dean gestured down the street. "Dick's. Two Deluxes, chocolate shake, fries. Get yourself something." His hand trembled and he clenched his fist as he shook his head. "Sooner is better than later."

"Dick's?" Castiel looked up, utterly perplexed.

"The burger joint. Thataway." Dean pointed again. "I'm fine, but I need food." Which was an understatement; he felt as though he hadn't eaten in days, and he highly doubted his ability to stand up again to take off if Castiel refused.

But Castiel stood, a trifle doubtfully, and rather than take flight he swung himself over the edge of the roof. Dean blinked as he heard the other man's impact on the sidewalk below. It was only two stories to the ground here, but that was still more than enough to rupture tendons on landing, and even a Quick Healer would have trouble walking for a few seconds. With flight so readily available, why hadn't the Angel just flown?

The rain had paused by the time Castiel returned with the white paper bag that Dean snatched without considering whether it was polite. He made short work of the first burger, not really bothering to chew, and halfway through the fries could already feel his frantic metabolism beginning to calm. Taking time to enjoy the second burger, he looked to the side to see Castiel sitting next to him. Watching him.

Dean swallowed. "I told you to get yourself something too," he said.

Castiel nodded. "I already ate it."

"Oh." Dean had been rather focused on his own food. He took a long drink from the chocolate shake and rolled his shoulder back again.

"Dean," Castiel said seriously. "You...were shot."

"I was shot," Dean agreed. He brought the last of his burger up to his mouth. "And then I got better."

"How?"

Dean took his time chewing, pushing his HUD frames to the top of his head to better ignore the biometric warnings flashing across them. "Cas," he said, the nickname tasting strange on his tongue, "I...you know my name. I figured you'd heard about me. Maybe watched me do my thing. But if either of those things were true, you'd know that taking bullets is kind of my schtick."

"You need a new schtick," Castiel said bluntly.

"I'm working on it," Dean replied drily. "But aside from that...everything I've heard about you said you shrug off bullets. And knife stabs. And gut punches. And everything in between. But you don't know what Quick Healing is, even when I'm doing it right in front of you." Dean pivoted to face the other man. "You've got wings, but you say you're not a Chimera. You can _hear_ the police bands. I'm pretty sure you've got some sort of telekinesis." He swallowed. "I haven't said two words to you before tonight, but you talk to me like you know me, so...level with me. What are you, really?"

"I already told you." Castiel shifted, his wings unfolding slightly to avoid dragging the tips on the rooftop. "I'm an Angel."

"Okay, that really raises more questions than it answers," Dean protested.

Castiel heaved a sigh. "How good are you at quantum physics?" he asked.

"Little rusty," Dean replied flatly.

"If I told you I was a multidimensional waveform, would that mean anything to you?"

Dean considered that. "Not really."

Castiel looked out at the lights of the city, eyes focused on nothing in particular. "I...exist in several dimensions simultaneously. Possibly infinite. I populate whichever dimension happens to be receiving my attention."

"Okay." Dean nodded.

"You don't believe me at all."

"Nope."

"Then why ask?" Castiel tore his gaze from his contemplation of the lights to focus on Dean. "If I have no reason to lie to you, you have no reason to doubt me."

"I met you for the first time an hour ago," Dean pointed out.

"And I've known you in every possible way for more years than you can count," Castiel countered, an edge of emotion coloring his flat, gravelly tone. "We've..." He looked away again. "I'm sorry. It's...always difficult to encounter you for the first time, no matter how many times I do it." Swallowing, he added, as though to himself, "I never know which Dean I'm going to find this time."

Comprehension wriggled its way to the front of Dean's thoughts, and he nearly choked on a fry. "Multidimensional," he managed after swallowing. "You're saying there's more than one of me?"

The Angel nodded gravely.

"How many?" Dean demanded.

"Possibly infinite," was the emotionless response.

The fries were growing cold and limp in their paper packet, but despite the uneasy shakiness of his low blood sugar, Dean wasn't hungry anymore. He toyed with a chunk of potato skin too small to be called a fry. "Why tell me this?" he asked finally, looking up to see that Castiel was intently studying his own hands.

"Because I've learned from experience that keeping secrets from you is unpleasant," Castiel replied. "And you deserve the truth, not half-lies and fabrications intended to protect you." He glanced to the side. "You know everything now. Do with it what you will."

"Everything?" Dean replied incredulously, and Castiel paused in his act of standing. "You haven't told me a damn thing." He tossed the packet of fries to the side. "Who are you? You give me a name and an unlikely story and tell me — what, exactly? And then you say you know me? What do I do for a living? Where do I live? What's my favorite book?"

Castiel set his jaw. "Inconsequential. You're you, whether you're a – a superhero or a demon hunter or a soldier or a stockbroker or a kindergarten teacher. And no matter where I go, you're there. Every time. You seek me out, and..." He shook his head and stood, wings spreading for balance as he unfolded himself. "There are some things I need to consider," he said gruffly as he shook his wings the rest of the way open. "I don't think I was ready for this to happen."

"We're not done here," Dean protested, pushing himself to his feet.

"No," Castiel agreed. "But I imagine you'll find me, or the other way around, when it's time to continue."

And with a flurry of wings and wind, Castiel launched himself from the roof and was gone.

* * *

><p>Dean almost couldn't fit the key into the slot of the lock; he jogged down the stairwell with an unsteady urgency, one hand sliding across the railing in the not-so-unlikely event of him needing to stabilize himself.<p>

Ash was waiting for him as he threw open the door to their floor, shoving a protein shake into Dean's hand before Dean could even take a breath. "Dude," Ash said as Dean upended it. "I think you need to start wearing Kevlar if you're gonna skip dinner before going out to get shot."

"Not a terrible idea," Dean admitted as he paused for breath. He shook his head. "I think that one clipped something important. I don't usually bleed that much, or use up that much energy."

Ash rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Only if you consider your subclavian artery important."

"I'm attached to it, I'll admit," Dean said before tossing back the rest of the protein shake. "Might need a few days to get over this one. We have any more of these?" He chucked the empty carton into the garbage can as he stepped through the door of their loft.

"Enough to feed a small army," Ash replied, waving his hand in the direction of the corner that acted as their kitchen. "But not if you're gonna go _get shot_ every night."

Immediate needs satisfied, Dean finally picked up on the tremulous quality of Ash's voice, and he turned, brow furrowed. "Ash? You good?"

Ash heaved a sigh, flopping into one of the computer chairs. "I knew this was your thing," he said as he pressed a few buttons and video playback began. "First time I've seen it." The screen immediately turned red, vital sign warnings flashing across the picture, and Dean felt his eyebrows fly up as he watched, for the second time that night, the blood soaking through his shirt as he unzipped his jacket, the numbers in the corner of the screen he'd ignored earlier pulsing alarmingly as his blood pressure plummeted and heart raced.

"Wow. You must have thought I was dying."

"Dude. You were." Ash stabbed a finger at the screen. "You stopped, but you were."

"I didn't. It'll take more than a bullet to the chest to take me out." Dean clapped an uneasy hand on Ash's shoulder. "Sorry I shook you up."

Ash shrugged. "Gotta get used to it if I'm gonna be your tech support." He jabbed a few keys and the macabre picture minimized, uncovering a still shot of Castiel. "Now spill. You owe me that much."

Dean scoffed. "Like you weren't watching."

"No, I wasn't," Ash said, this time sounding slightly offended, "because you took your damn HUD off. _Both times_. I don't even have audio."

"I..." Dean reached up to run a hand through his hair before he saw blood crusted in his cuticles. His blood. His tee shirt was stiff against his chest with it. "I need a shower," he said. "And I gotta think about how to put it all in order because it's..." He let out a single quiet laugh. "It's complicated."


	2. Chapter 2

FILENAME: CLOUDBREAK201312201103

"Does it feel any different?"

"Yeah." _Visual focuses on a pair of weights._ "Strained. Like when you're towing a big load in a car."

"I'd say that fifty kilos is about your limit, man."

"Not gonna be carrying many people then, huh?"

_Ash moves into view, peering upwards. _"I can make the thrusters stronger, but then they'd be bigger. More power – but less aerodynamic, more fuel, more expensive."

_The visual shakes as the wearer shakes his head._ "Nah. I'm already going through, what, two fuel cells a week?"

"For the main thruster. Half each for the stabilizers."

_A low, impressed whistle sounds._ "I don't even want to think about what that's doing to my bank account."

"You could always cut back a few nights a week."

"Hell no."

* * *

><p>Even with the entire city sprawling before him, whenever he crouched in wait for some action, Dean felt drawn to the older buildings of Capitol Hill.<p>

He didn't know why. The vantage point from the top of the water tower did afford some view of the area, but not only was the neighborhood far from the highest vantage point of the city, crime was surprisingly rare here; more often than not he ended up speeding downtown, taking valuable time. But it just didn't seem right to perch atop the more modern high-rises closer to the water.

Then, too, in the years he'd been patrolling Capitol Hill, he'd come to think of it as his territory. He liked to think that crime was low in part because everyone knew he was prowling. True, he no longer had the growl of his car to announce his presence, but people had learned very quickly that it had been replaced by the humming whoosh of his thrusters.

And downtown...that was Castiel's territory.

Dean was certain Castiel didn't think of it that way. He hadn't seemed protective or jealous during their run-in several weeks ago, and though Dean hadn't seen him since, he had the feeling that if there was an issue, Castiel would not be shy about letting Dean know.

Which, perhaps, was why Dean avoided downtown. He'd be much more likely to find company on those rooftops, company he wasn't sure he knew how to handle.

A bright orange line of text coalesced in the corner of his field of vision, and Dean blinked, shaking himself from his reverie.

_487 SAM_

It took a moment for Dean to parse; a 487 was Grand Theft, but what his brother had to do with it – until it clicked in his mind that SAM was the Seattle Art Museum.

He considered for a moment, lips pursed as he stared at the orange lines on his HUD. Museum theft wasn't all that interesting, and if it was on the police bands, the thief was already long gone. There wasn't anything he could do at this point.

He was doing a quick and dirty patrol over Volunteer Park when he felt his phone vibrate against his hip. The caller ID in the HUD claimed that it was Sam. His brother, this time, not the museum. Dean briefly considered ignoring it, but Sam rarely called this late just to chat.

He cut his thrusters three feet above the ground and dropped lightly, pulling his phone from his pocket. "Hey. What's up?"

"Hey. Remember that favor you owe me?" Sam sounded distracted, probably by the activity in the background that made him difficult to hear.

Dean groaned. "I already don't like where this conversation is going." He sighed. "Where are you?"

"I'm at SAM, actually."

"Of course you are." Dean reached under his HUD frames to rub his eyes. "Aren't you a _homicide_ detective? What're you doing at a theft?"

"There was a homicide. Kind of. Look, I don't want to get into it over the phone – just get your ass down here, all right?"

"On my way." Dean hung up and heaved another sigh before he launched into the air.

* * *

><p>Sam was pacing the roof of the museum, watching Dean's approach. His grave expression was ruined by a grin as Dean dropped, the thrusters humming down into standby. "So how many power lines have you hit so far?"<p>

"None," Dean lied smoothly.

Sam chuckled, shaking his head as he surveyed Dean head to toe. "I'm never gonna get used to how awesome that is."

Dean found himself with a mirroring grin. "It is pretty awesome, isn't it?" He considered pulling Sam into a rough one-armed hug, but the smile had already melted from his brother's face, and Dean felt his own assuming a serious frown. "So. How do you 'kind of' have a homicide?"

"He didn't die until..." Sam rubbed his eyes. "You remember Jill?"

Dean blinked. "Jill...your first girlfriend Jill?"

"Yeah. That Jill. She did that thing with electricity."

"Right. She was a Zapper."

"Whatever it's called." Sam shook his head. "Anyway, she was pissed at me once, and she sort of...paralyzed me for a few seconds."

Dean nodded. "Zapper sort of thing to do. Ash says they can do some really crazy things with the nervous system and muscles and –"

"If this is going to turn into another Ash sex life story, you can stop right there," Sam said, holding a hand up. Dean snapped his mouth shut. "That's what happened here. Two security guards, paralyzed with electromagnetic current. Blinded as well, apparently, though I'm not sure how that works."

"The eyes," Dean said sagely. "They gotta keep moving, otherwise the retinas..." he trailed off at Sam's expression of astonishment. "What? I read."

"Anyway," Sam continued, "The one guard says it took five minutes before he could move again, and he saw his buddy collapse. Heart failure. Apparently being a human battery shorted out his pacemaker and it couldn't snap him out of defib."

Dean winced. "Thus, kind of a homicide."

Sam nodded. "Right." He gestured at the museum below them. "Honestly, I don't even know the name of the sculpture that was stolen. And I don't really care – this place has insurance. But they brought me in because apparently, having a power gives me a 'unique qualification.'"

"It kind of does," Dean pointed out. "Zappers don't affect us for as long. Metabolism hocus pocus."

Sam's brow furrowed. "Really?"

Dean huffed a frustrated sigh. "I know you like to ignore it, Sam, but come on. This is basic stuff."

"I'm not getting into this on the roof of a museum in the middle of an investigation," Sam said shortly.

"Fine." Dean had yet to find a venue where Sam was willing to discuss his aversion at any length, but pressing the issue wouldn't accomplish anything. "Why did you bring me here, then?"

"This fits a pattern of art thefts in the area over the past few weeks." Sam jerked his head in the direction of the door. "Care to come down and see?"

"You're gonna ask me to help you catch him, aren't you?" Dean asked distastefully.

"That was, more or less, the plan."

Dean closed his eyes for a moment. "Like you said. Museums have insurance. He's not going around knifing anyone. I'm more of a back-alley brawler. Muggers. Rapists. Idiots in knife fights. This really isn't my thing."

"He killed someone."

"By accident, as far as I can tell." Dean shrugged. "Doesn't make him any less dead, and it does suck, but this isn't some dangerous criminal running through the streets with a hankering for Picasso."

"I beg to differ. This guy can waltz into a building and completely ignore security – and get security to completely ignore him. There's no video footage, no alarms went off, nothing. We have nothing to go by. There's an anonymous Zapper running around using his powers in an aggressive manner, and that doesn't strike you as dangerous?"

Dean ran both hands over his face, reaching under his HUD frames to rub his eyes. "If you've got nothing to go by, what am I supposed to possibly do to help?"

"I haven't worked that part out yet," Sam admitted.

Dean sighed heavily. "How about you figure out a plan, and I'll think about going along with it?"

"That's all I'm getting out of you tonight, isn't it?" Sam asked.

"Probably."

"You won't even come down to see the crime scene?" Sam jerked his head toward the door again.

"What's the point?" Dean asked. "I don't know what the hell I'm looking for. You're the detective. Go detect. If you need something punched, you know where to find me."

If Sam said anything else, it was swallowed in the hum of Dean's main thruster as he powered up again and launched himself into the air.

* * *

><p>The ferris wheel was closed for the night, though still brightly lit. Dean wasn't sure how he felt about the still-new landmark, but it did make a good place to sit and think while pondering the water of Puget Sound. Unlike rooftops, there was no mechanical clanging of ventilation systems and elevator shafts, nothing but the wind and the far-off sounds of the slumbering city below him.<p>

He ought to have guessed that the isolation would appeal to more than just him.

To his credit, Castiel landed surprisingly gracefully on the strut next to Dean, folding his wings tightly against his back as he balanced himself.

"I've been looking for you," Castiel said after several moments of silence.

"Must not have wanted to find me," Dean replied, not looking to the side. "I'm not hard to track down."

"Tonight," Castiel clarified. "I've been looking for you tonight."

"Why? You wanna unload some more bullshit?" Dean turned his head to meet the angel's eyes. They were the same dark blue as the predawn sky above them, reflecting the thousands of lights that adorned the ferris wheel in such a way that they looked like the night sky.

"I didn't lie once," Castiel began, but Dean held up a hand.

"Didn't say you did. Doesn't mean it wasn't bullshit." Castiel didn't seem to have anything to say to that, so Dean took a deep breath and plowed forward. "You have no idea who I am. Whoever you've met before wasn't me. I'm not some carbon copy across universes for you to play with."

"No," Castiel said simply. "You're a facet of the same soul. Different every time, but fundamentally –"

"Bull. Shit." Dean bit off the words with heat.

"Dean," Castiel said, and with such steel in his voice that the words Dean had been about to say vanished. "You believe, deep in yourself, that you're not good enough to lead the life you think you should. That you don't deserve everything you want. That your purpose in life is to devote every fiber of your being to protecting people who can't protect themselves. The one person you'd drop everything for is your brother, despite any distance that has grown between you two. You have a deep and abiding love for classic rock and roll, clean bedsheets, and pie, and_ I know you._"

Dean swallowed, clenching his jaw as he stared out over the water. "And what am I supposed to do with that?" he asked. "What were you hoping I'd do once you told me all this, if you know me so well?"

"I don't know," Castiel replied. He shifted, the rustle of cloth-on-cloth seeming loud.

"Then that makes two of us." Dean watched a seagull dive into the water below them. Castiel's face was unreadable in its profile, softly lit from a dozen different angles. Dean shifted his weight carefully as he tried to find words to break the silence, but the angel beat him to it.

"Why did you want to fly?"

Dean blinked. "What?"

"You've always been scared of flying. Getting you on a plane to go anywhere has always been..." Castiel trailed off.

"Can you do me a favor?" Dean asked, an edge to his voice that he wasn't sure was frustration or fear. "Can you stop talking like we're old buddies? There is no _always_. There is no you and me."

"Don't say that to me," Castiel replied, head turning to lock eyes with Dean, and the edge to the angel's voice was definitely some combination of anger and fear. "We start as strangers, but not for long – we've been friends, enemies, lovers, brothers in arms, rivals...there is always a 'you and me,' and I've had to start over again every single time. And every time, it seems like I get something wrong." He looked to the side, breaking the eye contact. "Just once, I wish it could be easy."

Dean shook his head. "Nothing's ever easy, pal. Sounds like something you should know by now."

"Yes. I should."

Dean looked down at his hands, unable to look directly at the raw emotion that roiled behind those blue eyes. He licked his lips, unable to decide if his next question was a good idea. "Lovers, huh?" From the corner of his eye, Dean could see Castiel nod. "More often than not?" Castiel didn't respond. "And you can't shake it."

"Could you?" Castiel replied quietly.

Question catching him off-guard, Dean snapped his mouth shut. "If I had to," he replied finally.

He could feel Castiel's eyes on him. "I almost believe you could. You've always —" He stopped abruptly, looking away in frustration.

Dean watched him, the minute adjustments his shoulders made, as though the angel was fighting some internal battle. Several times, he took a short breath as though he would say something, but stopped just short of speaking the words.

Dean shifted. He should leave.

He didn't want to. Despite the vast absurdity of it all, having the angel near..._felt_ right, hummed its comfort deep in the marrow of his bones.

The sky behind them was beginning to gain hues in the ombré of dawn, and, swallowing, Dean stuck out his hand. It took several moments before Castiel noticed, and he stared at it for the space of a heartbeat before taking it hesitantly.

"Dean Winchester," Dean said seriously, looking pointedly into Castiel's eyes. "Flying is awesome, but planes are terrifying. I'm a high-rise window-washer – kind of the family business. I like pie, classic rock, and seeing people get what's coming to them."

"What are...?"

"Starting over," Dean replied firmly. "And taking it from there."

Castiel stared before nodding slowly. "And I'm Castiel. I like burgers. And aquariums, but not zoos. The smell of freshly ground coffee. Bell choirs."

Dean let go, hand falling to his lap. "Good to meet you, Castiel. Mind if I call you Cas?"

The faint smile that touched the corners of Castiel's mouth was the first Dean had seen all night. "Not at all."

"Cas. As the only other guy around here who has to worry about running into power lines, we'll probably be seeing a lot of each other." Dean swallowed again. "And I'm okay with that."

If Castiel was surprised, he hid it well. "So am I."

* * *

><p>Hovering was still a problem. Which was the one and only reason why Dean was sitting in a tree like a diligent parrot.<p>

Eyes flicking to the corner of his HUD, he suppressed a sigh at the numbers that told him barely three minutes had passed since the last time he'd checked. He'd turned off the live feed of the police bands, knowing he couldn't do anything about them if he was supposed to be staking out the Burke Museum, which he ostensibly was. He made a mental note to refuse any more of Sam's requests if they involved stakeouts.

There was movement inside the building, and Dean tensed for a moment before identifying it as one of the security guards making his rounds. He settled back against the trunk of the tree, berating himself – the art thief wouldn't be using a flashlight.

Hell, he wasn't even sure why he was watching the front door, except that Sam had told him every other theft had been committed that way: the thief would disable the security system, incapacitating the cameras long before they could get a visual of him, and then waltz through the building like he owned the place.

This was his third night watching the locked front doors of the museum, and the already unexciting task had never had a shine to lose. Dean crossed his arms slightly differently and considered calling up a book to read on his HUD when movement tugged at his peripheral vision – in the parking lot. He turned his head and then froze as a car glided into the lot with a fluidity he'd normally ascribe to a cat.

"Oh, hello gorgeous," he breathed softly.

The Tesla Roadster was painted such a deep red that it could have been black, and it slid into the parking space in near-silence. Dean had always considered the sounds a car made to be a part of its personality, and any car built after he'd been born to be bland and boring. He was willing to make an exception to both rules for this one. It was a rather ostentatious choice of vehicle for an art thief, but Dean couldn't fault him for taste.

Dean leaned forward, trying not to cause too much movement that would catch attention, and noted that the red LEDs on the security cameras closest to him had already gone dark. This was it, then.

The door of the Roadster opened, and a figure stepped out, almost casually. Dean's jaw dropped at how the practical black clothing hugged definite hips, at the hair pulled into a sensible ponytail, at the delicate bone structure of the face as she scanned her surroundings.

The art thief was a woman.

"Shouldn't be so surprised," Dean muttered softly to himself as he watched her walk up to the doors of the museum with an utter lack of self-consciousness. The glass doors were apparently going to give her little trouble; with something from her belt she managed to shatter the glass with no outward effort, and that was all he needed.

He pressed the button on his wrist that would send a text to Sam to let him know to come with his officers, then jumped from the tree, engaging his thrusters as he went.

"Evening, ma'am," he said in a loud voice as he landed heavily behind her, causing her to halt halfway through climbing through the shattered glass of the door.

She didn't jump, or even flinch; she turned her head as though she'd been expecting company and was simply surprised it had gotten there so early. Dean tried his best to look intimidating as she looked him up and down, her eyes lingering at the smaller thrusters on his wrists.

Dean had no warning. She didn't gesture or narrow her eyes; her expression of utter calm never changed as Dean's muscles seized, cramping painfully. Suddenly robbed of the ability to balance himself, Dean fell to the side, landing on his arm in a way that would have made him swear if he'd been able to speak.

She smiled then, a grin like a knife in velvet, and before Dean's vision went dark he watched her turn swiftly to continue making her way through the wreath of broken glass that had once been the front doors to the museum.

_Come on_. Dean could still breathe, if only just barely. Obviously, she knew what she was doing – she didn't want to kill people who got in her way, just incapacitate them. The cramps began to wane in his arms and back as the familiar hunger stabbed at him, his body using up the resources he'd supplied it with shocking speed. Idly, as his vision began to clear, he considered upping the diet to seven thousand calories a day, especially if he was doing shit like this every night.

It had felt like much longer than the few seconds that had actually passed, but as Dean pushed himself to his feet as quietly as he could, he could see the woman still standing just on the other side of the door, motionless. Surveying for more cameras? Waiting for the security guards to come by on their rounds? Dean didn't know, but he wasn't going to give her the chance.

"I don't think so, sweetheart," he said, aiming his gun carefully. It would be pointed at her right shoulder when she spun around. Shoulder shots hurt like hell, but she'd live if he had to pull the trigger.

She did spin, and this time she was unable to hide her surprise at seeing him vertical so soon. Dean shrugged and offered her his best smug grin.

"Fascinating," was all she said, some accent Dean couldn't place clipping the word into sharp angles.

"The gig's up," Dean said, because it seemed like something he should say. "Come on out, and when the cops get here –"

"I'm afraid that just won't do."

Her eyes did narrow very slightly this time, and with a sudden drop in his stomach Dean found himself launched straight upward as his thrusters engaged at full capacity. His rapid ascent stopped after twenty feet and he shook his head against the vertigo, instinctively leaning forward to try and land again – but he couldn't. He hovered, thrusters completely unresponsive, and could do nothing but watch as the woman sniffed disdainfully at the gun Dean had dropped, strode over to her car, and slid into the front seat even as it backed out of the parking space.

"Ash!" he yelled.

_Working on it_, text flashed across his flickering HUD in response.

The police arrived less than two minutes after Dean had summoned them, but the view they were treated to was not that of Dean having subdued an elusive art thief as they had hoped. Instead, Dean waved sheepishly down at Sam as he slammed the car door. As Sam lowered his face into his hands to rub at his eyes in exasperation, Dean tried to grin through the sour feeling of defeat in his gut.

It was an expression Dean had grown accustomed to seeing on his brother's face.

* * *

><p>"Her name is Bela Talbot," Ash said, pointing at the still capture on the screen. "A few years back she was wanted in France, Belgium, and Germany for grand larceny. Disappeared off the map."<p>

"At least we have a name and a face now," Sam sighed. "And a car. Shouldn't be too hard to track her down."

"I'm sorry, man," Dean said for the fiftieth time. "I didn't think she could –"

"Well, she did," Sam interrupted. "And now she knows we're onto her. I'll be needing a copy of the video feed," he said to Ash, who nodded. "And Dean?"

"Yeah?" Dean looked up from his sandwich.

"Thanks for your help. But I think I'm going to use the favor you owe me for something else."

"Yeah," Dean said again, letting his eyes drop. "Don't blame you."

"It's just not your thing," Sam said after a few moments in a conciliatory tone, "and I should've listened when you told me that."

Dean took another giant bite as much to delay his reply as to get some food into him, and was relieved when Sam stood up and accepted the memory card Ash handed him. "I've got reports to write," he said by way of farewell, and Dean bobbed a nod as Sam strode out of the apartment.

It was never exactly silent in their apartment with the fans of the computers running nonstop, but it was close. Dean chewed more slowly as the failure of the evening began to beat at the walls he'd erected in his mind to try and ignore it.

"You didn't fuck up that bad," Ash said.

"Gee, thanks," Dean replied wryly. "I should get that on a tee shirt."

"And hey." Ash gestured towards the main thruster, which Dean had removed from his back and leaned against the wall. "Her override gave me the hint I needed for the hovering algorithm."

"Joy." Despite the yawning feeling in his stomach, Dean wasn't hungry. He put the sandwich down. "I think I'm going to bed."

Ash nodded amiably. "Finish that, and the protein shake, and then go pass out."

Dean shook his head. "Ash –"

"Do I gotta hold you down and force-feed you? 'Cause I will." Ash crossed his arms and attempted to look stern, and as Dean's eyes swept over his lanky frame, he couldn't help but chuckle.

"I could bench-press four of you." But he picked up his sandwich again anyway. If he'd learned one thing that night, it was to never underestimate.

* * *

><p>It was quiet tonight.<p>

Dean ignored the drug busts going on in SoDo; the cops usually had those well in hand, and didn't want assistance – most of the busts worked on the premise of undercover and plainclothes cops, and Dean was neither. He tended to avoid South Downtown anyway, stuffed to brim as it was with people just looking for trouble to prove how tough they were. Innocent bystanders didn't tend to get caught in that crossfire, and if two thugs wanted to duke it out for their own entertainment, far be it from Dean to stop them.

He idly thought about doing a flyover of some of the traditionally rowdier areas of downtown, then considered his nearly empty thrusters and shook his head. Best to save that last twelve percent for something actually important. Just because Ash could get the fuel cells cheaply did not mean they were inexpensive.

The city sprawled beneath him, his lazy perch on the top of Smith Tower a decent vantage point for most of downtown. It sounded like there was a party of some sort winding down on the observation deck just below. He idly considered crashing it when a police scanner code flashed on his HUD that had nothing to do with drugs. It was almost wholly unfamiliar, and he stared at it for a few seconds before it registered that it was a string of not just scanner codes, but the shorter and more specific 10-codes as well.

_Arson. Explosion. Ambulances needed._

And he was at twelve percent on his main thruster. A quick and dirty calculation in his head put him at ten percent by the time he reached the Westin tower, where everything was going down. And once there, what could he really do?

He threw himself from the roof of the tower anyway, dropping in a controlled fall for several stories before engaging his thruster and speeding toward the fire.

Police and fire vehicles had only just begun to arrive, the flashing lights throwing the streets into sharp relief, gawkers beginning to line up outside the perimeter to point. Dean landed just inside the line of tape, looking up with alarm.

Smoke plumed from nearly every floor, flames licking the windows of several of the stories, firefighters already storming into the ground floor of the building. Dean swore under his breath. He knew nothing about fires, but given the size of the building and the scope of the blaze, he had a hunch that the building was toast.

It was only because he was looking upward that he caught the winged silhouette before it was engulfed by the smoke pouring from one of the upper floors, and his eyes widened. What was he...?

"Are there people up there?" Dean demanded of one of the firefighters who had just finished connecting a hose to a fire hydrant.

"Yes," the firefighter replied tersely. "Not many. But some."

"Hell," Dean muttered, glancing in the corner of his HUD. Nine percent. He should fly back to Ash and change out the fuel cells before doing anything. But that would take half an hour or more, and he watched as Castiel dove toward the ground, the limp form of a person in his arms.

Castiel's eyes seemed to seek Dean out immediately after he'd laid the unconscious man gently on the ground next to an aid vehicle. He ignored the EMTs who gathered around the victim, striding purposefully to where Dean stood. "How much can you lift?" Castiel demanded as soon as he was in earshot.

"Not much," Dean replied helplessly. "And I'm almost empty."

Castiel's lips pressed together in frustration. "Help me scout out people at windows, then. I can't be everywhere at once."

"How am I supposed to tell you I found one?" Dean asked as he jabbed at his control panel, taking his thrusters out of standby.

"Pray," Castiel said simply. "And be careful. These flames aren't natural."

Without waiting for a reply, Castiel launched himself into the air, the wind from his wingbeats pressing against Dean with the acrid smell of smoke and burning plastic. With a deep breath, Dean leapt into the air after him.

The side of the building facing away from the street seemed better off, without any actual flames visible through the windows, though smoke still roiled behind the glass. Dean squinted through his HUD as it scanned, trying to identify silhouettes or faces, ignoring the pulsing percentage in the corner that told him he had exactly four minutes and fifty seconds of use left in his thruster. He had time.

And then the targeting lines closed in on a dark shape that was standing at a shattered window on the thirtieth story.

"Pray, huh?" Dean muttered. He shook his head and let his eyelids half-close. "Cas, if you've...somehow got your ears on...far side of the building, thirtieth floor, seven windows in."

With no way to tell if Castiel had actually heard him, Dean wasted thirty precious seconds hovering, waiting for Castiel to emerge from around a corner, before shaking his head. "Screw it. I'm going in." If nothing else, he could calm the person down while preserving his thrusters.

The dark shape backed away as Dean approached the broken window, perhaps giving him room to land, and the fluidity with which the shape moved almost gave Dean pause before he fell to a crouch on the industrial carpet floor.

"Help is coming," he called, HUD scanning what was apparently a conference room for whoever it had been.

"I don't doubt it."

Dean spun, heart racing, to see the shape – a man, stout and considerably shorter than he – back at the window. He clenched his jaw against the question that sprung to the tip of his tongue, a question whose answer would give him no useful information.

The man turned, and though the facial recognition scanned rapidly, it stalled before finding a match: Marvin Doherty, a name Dean recognized but couldn't place. "Dean Winchester," the man said, shaking his head in amusement. "Please excuse me for failing to be surprised."

Dean licked his lips. "Sorry," he said sardonically, "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

A shadow passed over the window and Marvin took several calm steps forward to give space for Castiel to land. "Castiel," he said, without turning or taking his eyes from Dean. "Infinite stories, and you choose to tell the same one, over and over."

"I like this one," Castiel said flatly, folding his wings tight against his back and shaking his right arm against his side. Dean could see a flash of silver, and his eyebrows shot straight up at the blade that was suddenly in the angel's hand. "What happened to your wings?"

Marvin smirked, finally turning to look between Dean and Castiel, showing his back to neither of them. "Don't you find the ten-foot wingspan to be just slightly ostentatious?"

Castiel's wings shivered slightly, the feathers ruffling for a moment before smoothing back down. "Thirteen."

"Of course." Marvin's smirk grew wider. Dean wanted to reach out and smack it off his face. "I would never presume to bruise your precious ego." The man rolled his shoulders in a movement eerily similar to ones Dean was used to seeing from Castiel when he stretched his wings. "But I prefer a...subtler approach."

"Dean, go." Castiel's voice was flat as he flipped the blade in his grip. "This isn't your fight."

"Oh, it's not?" Marvin sounded amused again. "Are you still keeping that tired old secret? He's lying to you," he said sidelong to Dean. "He always does."

Dean set his jaw as he pulled his gun from its holster. If Castiel was armed, he ought to be as well. "Same soul, different edition, right?" he said to the angel, not looking at him. He could see the reluctant nod from the corner of his eye as he trained the gun on Marvin. "Then I'm gonna assume this is my fight as much as yours."

"Dean –!"

Ears ringing, Dean blinked and shook his head as a bone-deep, shocking ache radiated out from his back, and as he tried to get his feet under him he found he couldn't, nor could he quite get his breath, and like tumblers in a lock he realized all at once that some massive unseen force was holding him against the conference room wall, crushing him.

Marvin held Dean's gun negligently, apparently ignoring Dean entirely as he turned to face Castiel. With a careless flip he tossed the gun to the side and a blade identical to Castiel's appeared in his own hand.

"Thank you, by the way, for walking directly into my trap," he said, and gestured. Castiel staggered, wings snapping out to steady himself, and Dean managed one burning smoke-tainted breath. It was difficult to strangle a Quick Healer, but it was possible, and black spots were already beginning to coalesce before his eyes. Worse, he could feel the wall at his back growing hot, the momentarily forgotten flames now reminding him that they were in a rapidly burning building.

And he could do nothing as Castiel lunged forward with his blade, missing his target as Marvin stepped deftly to the side. The split-second that Castiel was off-balance was enough for the man to sink his blade into Castiel's back with a flash of blue. Castiel sprawled forward, his own silver blade skittering across the floor to land at Dean's feet.

Flames exploded through the glass window in the door of the conference room, startling the man into looking up, and the pressure holding Dean against the wall abated. He dropped, landing hard on his knees, and as he gulped down air he curled his fingers around the cold handle of Castiel's blade.

"No."

Dean felt a strike against his temple and, still disoriented, he slumped to his side on the carpet. Dimly, he watched Marvin collect the blade and, with a horrible casualness, pull his own blade from Castiel's back before simply disappearing.

"Cas." Dean pushed himself to his hands and knees, not sure he could stand and not sure he should, given the thick smoke that was already beginning to coat his mouth in bitterness. "Cas, are you...?"

Castiel's wings gave a feeble shudder, and Dean sucked in a sigh of relief that turned into a hacking cough.

They were both still alive, and he'd be damned if he couldn't keep them that way.

Muscles weak and shaking, with dinner a long distant memory, Dean dragged the limp angel with him to the floor-to-ceiling panes of broken glass, choosing to ignore the blood trail he left as he did. Cold air billowed around them, the sirens tinny and indistinct below them.

After pausing for the barest of moments to collect the ragged edges of his courage, Dean pulled Castiel tightly against his chest and toppled them both out the window.

As they gained momentum, Dean tried to time it. No time for the emergency parachute, and no room for it to deploy anyway. Three percent thrusters in one good burst at about ten stories would slow their fall just enough to probably survive. Probably.

The ground rushed up to greet them at a frantic pace, the wind ripping at the angel in Dean's arms, and Dean stabbed at the control screen.

The thrusters roared, the kickback tearing at the straps across Dean's chest.

And with fifteen stories still to go, his thrusters gave out under the added strain of Castiel's dead weight in Dean's arms, a spectacular explosion tumbling him head over heels as they overloaded.

_Right_, a cool, disconnected voice in Dean's head said. _Plan B, then._

They were already mostly positioned as they needed to be; a single twist was all it took to get himself between the ground and the angel, and not a moment too soon.

The double impact of the angel landing on top of him and Dean landing on his back on the cement of the alleyway forced the air from his lungs in the most shocking jolt he'd ever experienced. Electricity shot through his fingers and toes until he thought he would burn with it before everything, all sensation save blurry sight, dissolved into numbness. Suddenly deafened, he could see black at the edges of his vision and at first his sluggish mind thought it might be the angel's wings, but as it encroached further it occurred to him that he was losing consciousness.

_Odd_, that same cool voice said. _Seems like things should hurt. _

He couldn't move.

He could feel Castiel shifting on top of him, but the sensation came from far off, as though it were happening to someone else and he was simply observing.

_Huh. Maybe this will be what finally kills me._

The tiny pinpricks of his vision winked out.


	3. interlude

INTERLUDE

Sam sighed, bringing a hand up to rub his eyes. The coffee in his mug had gone stale and cold hours ago, and he couldn't muster the will to walk down the hall to the lounge to rinse and refill the mug.

He clicked over to his email again, pressing the refresh button unnecessarily – there would be no APB updates this late at night. As each day slid by, his determination to catch Ms Talbot increased in inverse proportion to the likelihood of him actually doing so.

The most recent email was still displaying on the reading pane, and for lack of anything useful to do and not willing to admit a day's defeat and go home, Sam reread it.

_Sam,_

_Now that Dean Winchester is a freelance professional, policy says we should be protecting his civilian identity in reports. Any idea what he goes by?_

_Keith_

Sam scoffed softly at the idea of his brother giving himself any sort of alter ego. He recalled Dean protesting violently at having to adopt a team nickname for the high school wrestling team.

And yet...there was a reason the department policy was in place. Phoenix Jones, one of Seattle's first professional vigilantes, had been forced to retire after one of his rivals had used his civilian identity obtained from police reports to attempt to brutally and permanently injure him and most of his family in a hostage situation that had made national news.

Dean didn't have a family, exactly. He had Ash, and Sam was never exactly sure whether they were just perennial roommates or something more secretly involved, but he doubted Dean considered the eccentric genius in anything like a familial light.

He did have Sam, though, and Sam had Jess. It was entirely possible that anyone wanting to do Dean harm could go down those channels.

Sam bit his lip and hit the reply button, hands hovering over the keyboard as he considered his response.

_Keith,_

_Dean Winchester hasn't expressed interest in an official vigilante identity. The videos he sends us all have the same filename and watermark in the corner. Until he tells us otherwise, the internal code name for him will be Cloudbreak._

_Sam_

He hit send and gathered himself to begin the journey home when his desk phone rang. He frowned at it before picking it up. "Winchester."

"Dean's hurt."

Sam's chest felt as though someone had struck him in the sternum. "Where?" he demanded of Ash.

"The fire at the Westin Tower." The audio quality had a strange rhythm to it, as though Ash was running with the wire of a handsfree microphone beating against his chest. "He jumped out the goddamn window. His HUD was still working, until the paramedics took it off. He's on his way to Sound View General."

Sam swallowed. "How bad?"

There was a pause. "Bad. Real bad. Even for Dean."

"Trauma surgery bad?"

"They're gonna try."

"Shit." Sam reached into his laptop bag for his cell phone. A light was blinking; he'd missed several calls. "I'm on my way. Maybe I can beat him there. Surgery'll kill him."

"I'm nearly there. I'll try to hold them off."

The call dropped, and Sam slammed the handpiece back down into its rest and sprinted for the garage. He wasn't supposed to use the siren and lights for personal reasons, but he'd be damned if he was going to patiently navigate the maze of one-way streets between the precinct and the hospital.

If he was reprimanded, he could always say he was acting to preserve the life of a city resource.


	4. Chapter 3

"I'm his brother. Next of kin. I call the shots. Get him out of surgery_now_."

"Sir, his spinal cord is –"

"I don't care. Calories. Get some calories into him. He's a Quick Healer. Cut into him and his body'll just try to heal that, and he doesn't have the energy for that right now. Pump him full of whatever high-calorie sludge you've got. That's the only thing that'll fix him."

"He's a – I'm sorry, but Quick Healers are –"

"Rare. I know. But he's only going to stay alive if you give him some goddamn fuel and keep it coming."

"Sir, do you have any proof of –"

"Proof? Here. You want proof?"

"Sir, please put the knife aw– oh my god."

"It's just blood. There, see? All better. He's my brother. He's got the same thing. Now tell the surgeons to sew him back up and start pouring food into him."

"I...yes. I'll get them started..."

"Good. Sorry about the mess. Can I have a towel?"

* * *

><p>Bright.<p>

Dean groaned and tried to turn away from the window. Stupid east-facing window. Stupid sunrise. Once again he refreshed his mental list of things to buy, emphasis on blackout curtains.

He wasn't on his side. He'd thought he'd turned, but he was still on his back.

This tiny worrying thought was enough to make him try to open his eyes, only to find that they were heavier than iron doors.

His throat hurt.

No, scratch that. His _everything_ hurt.

"Don't try to talk." A soothing voice. Very soothing. Very familiar. Not Sam's. Not Ash's. Had he been trying to talk? He didn't recall. "You're in the hospital. They've given you a feeding tube. Just relax."

"Cas?" he managed, even if it felt like he was ripping the back of his throat to say it.

A gentle, cool touch on his cheek. "I know it hurts. This will take a while to heal, even for you."

Dean shifted, and his body found new and exciting ways to tell him exactly what was wrong with it. He took a deep breath, screwing his eyes shut harder. If an ache could be said to be excruciating, radiating, and everywhere at once, this was it. There weren't any sharp stabs of pain because there wasn't anything Dean could isolate that wasn't already hurting to its greatest capacity. He hissed the breath out through his teeth. Even his diaphragm was lodging complaints.

"I've called the nurse. She'll bring some painkillers. They tried to give you an IV, but..."

A chuckle threatened to bubble up from Dean's stomach, but he managed to stifle it, giving rise to only a rictus of a grin. Of course an IV wouldn't work. His blood vessels were always the first things to heal. A bodily process that could expel a bullet would make short work of a cannula.

"I can't heal you, or I would. Something about your cells...they won't let me interfere. But maybe..."

A hand cupped Dean's cheek, and from it radiated a warm, content fatigue, spreading through him in a delightfully fuzzy rush, and the last thing he heard as the pain receded was "Sleep now. I'll watch over you."

* * *

><p>Swallowing, even just swallowing the vaguely chocolate-flavored mush the hospital had provided, was enough of a lesson in agony that Dean would have given the whole enterprise up if it had not been for two factors.<p>

One: the cold against the abused tissues of his throat felt good for several seconds before it started complaining again.

And two: he had never in his life been so hungry.

"You're up to twenty _thousand_ calories a day," the floor nurse had told him, shaking his head in awe as he handed over the third nutrient shake of the morning.

"Yeah, well, keep 'em coming," Dean croaked before closing his lips around the straw. "I got a lot of damage to heal."

It was an understatement; Sam had read aloud the diagnoses on his chart in a somber tone the night before, when Dean had finally felt human enough to open his eyes, if not speak coherently. Esophageal burns from the smoke were the least of his problems, despite being the ones that were currently causing him the most grief. Thirteen fractured ribs, five of which had punctured his lungs. Shattered scapulae – not just one, but both. Complex fractures of the pelvis. Both hips dislocated. Aortic detachment, which Dean hadn't even known was possible, but was apparently what instantly killed most people who impacted the ground with the velocity he had. A mostly severed and crushed spinal cord that should have left him quadriplegic at the very least. Ruptured spleen. Massive hemorrhagic internal bleeding. The back of his skull smashed like a lightbulb, and enough smaller skull fractures to make the x-ray film look like a cobweb.

Most of these ailments had mended themselves, in descending order of severity, once his body had acquired the fuel to do so. Now, two full nights and an entire day later, he was left with a burned throat, extensive soft tissue damage, and a concussion.

And bruises. His entire body was a varicolored tapestry of bruises, both from his impact with the ground and the impact of the fully-grown angel falling atop him.

Dean looked up from his chocolate-ish shake, eyes touching Castiel's for a brief moment before he looked down again.

The chair by the bed had been flipped around, the angel straddling the back of it to accommodate his wings. His arms were folded atop the backrest, his chin resting on his forearms as Castiel silently watched Dean devour the concoction.

They hadn't spoken since Dean had first awoken the previous morning. Dean had either been delirious with pain medication – if he had spoken then, Castiel was kind enough to not mention it – or sleeping, when he was not shoving anything approximating food into his mouth or trying with hand signals to reassure Ash that he was all right. But neither had Castiel moved from that spot, nor slackened his vigil.

Dean cleared his throat – a mistake – and took a breath. "Cas. How're you?"

Castiel straightened, his wings unfolding from against his back just slightly. "I've...been better." He shrugged his right shoulder experimentally. "But I was lucky. That should have killed me. Would have, had his aim been better."

Dean nodded slowly. "I'm guessing the pointy things are more than what they seem."

That earned a low chuckle from the angel, a sound that did more to ease the residual aches in Dean's body than all the narcotics of the day before. "You could say that, yes, in that an Angel Blade is the only weapon that can actually kill me. And now Metatron has not only his, but mine as well."

Dean blinked. "I'm going out on a limb here and guessing you're not talking about the Transformer."

Another small laugh. "No. Metatron is, literally, the voice of God." Castiel's brow furrowed. "Was. It's...complicated. Archangels – and make no mistake, he's about the highest tier an archangel can achieve – can skip between realities at will, and he's...not pleased with me right now."

"So he's got it in for you." Dean took a long drag from his pseudochocolate shake as Castiel nodded gravely. "Dude. Celebrity heroes in the big-ass cities are the ones with nemeses. They're gonna get on your ass for licensing infringements."

Castiel opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, the door to the room opened, and Dean's eyes widened at the greasy paper bag that was thrust into the room, followed closely by Sam.

"Thought you could use something other than protein sludge," Sam said in greeting, tossing the bag to the bedside table. He nodded to Castiel in acknowledgement, who bobbed a single nod in return. Dean glanced between the two; of course they would have already met, if Castiel hadn't moved from that spot.

"I could kiss you," Dean said finally as he reached for the bag. He didn't want to think about how much chewing and swallowing was going to hurt.

"Please don't." Sam dragged a chair from beneath the window to sit on the other side of the bed. "How you holding up?"

Dean shrugged as he peeled the paper away from one of the burgers. "Feel like I got hit by a sidewalk going sixty miles an hour," he replied. "Haven't slept this much since sixth grade. And if my damn window crews don't stop sending me flowers it's going to turn into a rainforest in here." He gestured at the line of bouquets on the windowsill. "But I'm good."

Sam shook his head. "Dean," he said, rubbing his eyes, "what were you thinking?"

Pausing in the act of bringing the burger to his mouth, Dean raised an eyebrow. "Well, to be honest, I was thinking of getting me and Cas here out of a burning building before he bled out or got his wings fried extra-crispy."

Cas winced, tucking his wings in closer to his body from the relaxed position they'd been in. Dean thought it was a reaction to his comment, but when Sam let out a startled "What?" it suddenly became clear that perhaps Castiel had not disclosed all the events of that evening.

"I would have been fine in a few minutes," Castiel said in a low voice, not meeting Sam's eyes. "But we didn't have a few minutes. I'm not certain I'd still be alive if it weren't for Dean." For emphasis, Castiel loosened his crooked tie and pulled his shirt to the side, showing off a puckered scar just below his right collarbone where the blade had punched straight through his shoulder.

Sam let out a sigh in a whoosh. "So you're a Quick Healer too." He buried his face in his hands. "God, there are two of you."

"Three of us," Dean corrected, though in Castiel's case that wasn't entirely accurate, before Sam cut him off.

"Two of you running around, not caring if you get shot or stabbed or dropped out of a building because you think you're indestructible."

"Well." Dean gestured at himself. "Not indestructible, but I think I'm kind of doing okay."

"Yeah? And at what cost?" Sam demanded. "How many years did you just exchange for your little swan dive out of a burning building?"

"Not this again," Dean groaned, shaking his head and finally taking a bite of his burger for an excuse to not say anything.

Which was, possibly, a mistake, because in the silence that followed, Castiel cleared his throat. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Cell division," Sam said flatly. "Quick Healers heal because of rapid cell division. Get that much cell division going on, that quickly, you get mutations. Quick Healers have about forty years before the tumors start up, and that's if they're not getting shot every other week."

"Hiding from it won't improve your odds," Dean said under his breath. Sam either didn't hear him or pretended not to.

Castiel looked stunned. "And...there's nothing...no surgery or...?"

Sam let out a bitter laugh. "I needed my appendix out when I was eleven, because Quick Healing doesn't do jack against infections. They had to put me into hypothermic shock to slow down the healing enough for them to get in, and after they cut it out, _it grew back_. Without the infection, which was at least something, but..."

Dean coughed. "You're just still pissed because they couldn't put you out for it."

Sam glared. "Dean, I had an _open appendectomy without anesthesia_. At least you were unconscious when they were slicing you open a few nights ago."

Castiel's eyes darted between the two of them as they spoke. "John Winchester?"

Dean caught on to Castiel's question before Sam did: _How did John Winchester die in this universe?_ "Twelve different cancers," he said shortly. "All at once. About three years ago. Only took him about two weeks, once it started."

"The moral of the story," Sam said in a tone that made it clear he was done with this topic, "is that surgery isn't safe for us, and the tumors take over, and removal is impossible. There's a point of no return. And Dean seems hell-bent on running toward it at full speed."

"And Sam avoids papercuts to try and buy more time," Dean shot back. "He doesn't seem to understand that you don't get to bargain with a death sentence."

The glare Sam shot him was almost palpable; Dean swallowed. "Sorry," he muttered, eyes falling to the burger.

"My lunch break is almost over," Sam muttered as he stood. "I'm glad you're doing better. You should be out by tomorrow at this rate."

"Tonight," Dean countered. "I'm sick of tubes, and my crew's on the Alaska Bank building tomorrow."

There was a ghost of a smile that flickered across Sam's face before he raised a hand in farewell. "Cas," he said briefly, and then he slid out the door.

The hum of the monitors in the room layered the expectant silence with apprehension. After what felt like an eternity, Castiel took a breath.

"Dean –"

"Save it." Dean didn't look up. "I don't need to hear it from you, too."

"I didn't know what this cost you."

Dean raised his eyes to glare. "No. Stop. Right now. Or else you walk out of here."

Castiel pressed his lips together, but nodded.

"You start treating me different, we're gonna have issues." Dean threw the burger down on the table. "Everyone has a death sentence. Most people just don't know what it is yet. I can either whine about it, or I can leave some sort of mark, make some waves, and make damn sure it was all worth it."

"But –"

"I mean it, Angel. You start tiptoeing around me, we're gonna have some words, and I'll probably punch you. You may have noticed I speak fluent Fist."

"Understood." Castiel shifted in his chair, letting his wings unfold away from where they had been tightly furled against his back. "Thank you," he said softly. "You could have just left me."

Dean snorted. "Like hell I could have." He shot a sidelong glance at the angel. "But you already know I couldn't."

The slightest hint of a smile played at the edge of Castiel's eyes. "I suppose I do."

Dean swallowed, then made a face as he raised a hand to grope at the tube taped to his cheek. "Get me a nurse. I want this damn tube outta my nose."

* * *

><p>"Oh, hell no." Dean shook his head, crossing his arms stubbornly.<p>

The look the nurse returned him was every bit as stubborn. "You can stand there all night if you'd like, Dean, but you're not leaving this hospital unless it's in a wheelchair. Hospital policy."

"Stupidest policy I've ever heard of," Dean shot back. "First you won't let me leave unless I've got a ride, even though I can see my apartment from here. Then –"

"Dean," Sam said wearily from the doorway, "there's no one to impress here. Just get in the damn chair so I can take you home."

Dean looked between the two of them before heaving a sigh and throwing himself into the wheelchair.

"I can take him from here," Sam said to the nurse.

"You can leave the chair with the volunteer at the entrance," the nurse replied. To Dean, "What do you want to do with the flowers?"

Dean spared a glance at the half-dozen vases. "There's gotta be people here who will enjoy them. Take 'em to them."

The nurse's face softened very slightly before he nodded. "It's good to see you recovered," he said in farewell.

Sam had barely pushed the chair through the double doors of the hospital entrance before Dean launched himself from it. "Right. Sorry you had to come all this way to walk me through the halls, but I've got it from here."

"No," Sam said evenly as he passed the chair off to a yellow-vested volunteer, "I'm driving you home."

"I live five blocks that way," Dean argued, stabbing his finger in that direction.

"I know where you live. That's why I'm taking you there." Sam fished his keys from his pocket.

"Listen," Dean said firmly, "I've already got a nursemaid. He's got feathers, and he's stretching them right now, but I bet he's not far, and if I so much as stumble he's probably gonna be there to catch me. So I'm walking."

Sam heaved a sigh. "Fine. But I'm coming with."

"Fine. I'm stopping for food on the way."

"Then I am, too."

"No rabbit food where I'm going."

"I'm sure I'll manage."

"Then come along, little brother." Dean gestured expansively at the sidewalk.

* * *

><p>"That burger," Sam said conversationally, "is bigger than your head."<p>

"Thing of beauty, isn't it?" Dean replied appreciatively, pushing down on the top bun in an attempt to compress it enough to make taking a bite possible. "Bacon, fried onions, bleu cheese..."

"You're lucky you're not going to live long enough for atherosclerosis."

"I take my victories where I can get 'em." Dean took a bite of the burger, closing his eyes to truly bask in the glory of real food after two days of hospital goo. "How're your chicken nuggets?" he asked once he'd swallowed.

Sam shot him a poisonous look in the middle of biting into a chicken strip. "Good," he said around it.

Dean snorted. "Remember how you used to throw a fit if we didn't get the dinosaur-shaped ones?"

Sam glanced at Dean with an odd expression as he chewed. "Yeah," he replied. "So you used to sneak them into the grocery cart when Dad wasn't looking." He exhaled in a chuckle. "Those were so disgusting. Why did we even like them?"

"It was salt and chicken parts shaped like dinosaurs. Did we need a reason?" Dean smiled fondly down at his burger. "Good times." He prepared to take another bite.

"How long has it been since we've done this?"

Startled, Dean put the burger down and looked across the table, considering the question. "What, ate together?"

"Just us," Sam clarified.

Dean let out a breath as he thought. "Since Dad died, I think. Before that. Since you got married."

Sam nodded slowly. "Long time."

"We've been busy," Dean pointed out. "You work the weirdest hours ever, and between my thing at night and running the windows during the day, my schedule's not much better."

"Still." Sam looked up. "We gotta start making time."

Dean took another bite, watching Sam suspiciously, eyebrows raised in an invitation for his brother to continue speaking.

"We're – both of us – coming to the end of the line."

"Sammy," Dean said warningly through his mouthful, hastening to swallow.

"It's going to happen, whether we talk about it or not," Sam insisted. "And...look. I just don't want to be a stranger to the only other person who knows what it's like."

"Everybody dies, Sammy." Dean took a long drink from his beer bottle. "We just know how it's gonna happen. And that's not even guaranteed – hell, I could get meningitis and kick off next week. Or," he said, gesturing with the bottle, "you and I could be the first Quick Healers who're immortal. They'll have to send government agents to cut our heads off."

Sam cracked a small smile. "Think we can survive that?"

"Don't really want to test it." Dean put the bottle down. "But I'm just saying. Don't start planning your tearful death speech just yet. If I'm still kicking, you've got ages."

Sam snorted. "Right. My brother, the litmus."

"You've called me worse." Dean cleared his throat. "But while we're on the topic, I do have some...papers."

"Papers?" Sam asked warily.

"Someone's got to run the windows when I..." Dean shook his head. "It practically runs itself. I cleaned it up a lot from what Dad had going. It's actually something approximating a respectable business now. Hell, Linda's practically the boss of me anymore." Dean realized he'd been delivering this speech to his burger, and looked up to see Sam staring at him in astonishment. "What I'm saying is, it won't take much effort, and it'll keep Jess comfortable when...you know." He coughed. "Just didn't want it to come as a complete surprise."

"So you do think about it," Sam said slowly.

Dean scoffed as he brought the bottle to his lips again. "Of course I think about it. Sometimes it's hard to think about anything else. It's why I do what I do." He took a swallow. Sam didn't look like he was going to say anything, but not for lack of trying. Dean set the bottle down precisely in its ring of condensation on the table. "I'm not living each day like it's my last. Because it's not. That's depressing as hell. I'm living each day like it's the only one I'm gonna get."

"What's the difference?" Sam asked.

"One's the end of a long, sad story. It's also a Hallmark card, and I don't go in for Hallmark cards. But the other one?" Dean grinned, a bit feral at the edges, as he brought the sloppy mess of a burger up to his mouth again. "A reason to paint the town red."

* * *

><p>They'd gone two blocks, wavering slightly in the manner of the comfortably drunk, not quite leaning on each other for support but close enough that a quick grab at the other's shoulder was not out of the question, if one of them needed it. It was mostly an act – with their metabolisms, alcohol wasn't intoxicating for long – but neither of them seemed inclined to admit it.<p>

"Did you notice someone's following us?" Sam asked conversationally.

"Yup," Dean replied amiably. "Two someones. Since the alley next to the bar."

"They're about to have a bad night, aren't they?"

"They are if they try something." Dean put the chances of that at around fifty-fifty; he and Sam were rather large specimens, and even if they were visibly inebriated, they didn't make the most appealing targets.

But it would seem that tonight, chance erred on the side of mugging.

"Wallets," one of the followers barked as Dean felt the muzzle of a gun press into his back.

"Do you have any idea how much you don't want to be doing this right now?" Sam asked, making no move toward his back pocket.

"Wallets, and we'll have that ring of yours, too," was all the other man said in response.

"Normally, I'd give you five seconds to just walk away," Dean said, turning, arms crossed. "But this is my turf. And that's my brother. And if you know anything about this neighborhood –" Dean gestured dismissively at the gun – "you know that peashooter isn't going to help you much."

His assailant's eyes widened. "Shit. You're–"

"Yup."

"Shit," he repeated, lowering his gun. "Look, I–"

"Too late."

It was a wide haymaker straight to the mugger's jaw, the kind of punch anyone with any sort of sense could duck or block, but people with sense rarely set out to mug two large adult men with only one weapon on their side. The mugger went down like a bag of wheat, and next to him, Dean saw Sam roughly grab the other dumbfounded offender and turn him, hand finally reaching behind him and under his jacket, but not for his wallet.

"You're both under arrest for assault with a deadly weapon and attempted armed robbery," he began, snapping the handcuffs on. He jerked a nod at Dean's dazed mugger on the ground, and Dean knelt, pulling a zip tie from his own pocket. He rose to his feet as Sam recited the Miranda Rights with as much inflection as the Pledge of Allegiance, then pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket to call for a squad car.

"You and I should team up more often," Dean said as Sam hung up the phone.

Sam snorted. "No thanks. You tend to attract the sort of excitement I actively try to avoid."

Dean blinked. "You're a _homicide_ detective."

"Right. I show up after everyone's already dead." Sam raised a hand in greeting at the squad car that rolled around the corner.

Dean rubbed a hand over several days' worth of stubble on his cheeks. "Point. I'm good from here. You can finish playing with our friends. And...thanks."

Dean thought he might have to explain what the thanks was for, but Sam met his eyes and nodded, once, briskly, and behind his eyes Dean could see that it had been understood.


	5. Chapter 4

"I shouldn't give you this back."

"C'mon, Ash. _One time _I blow it up and –"

"That gas guzzler of yours is your baby, this one is mine. You wrecked her. And wrecked you in the process."

"I was kind of running low on options –"

"It has a _parachute_ that you didn't _use_."

"Alleyway! No room for a parachute! And no time for one!"

"I should ground you. Literally."

"Look, I'm sorry, all right?"

"For what? Wrecking my stuff or scaring the bejeezus outta me?"

"...Both. Mostly the 'scaring you' part."

"Punk."

"Nerd."

"Don't blow up 2.0."

* * *

><p>They hadn't discussed it, but by unspoken agreement, the Columbia Center Tower was where every night now began.<p>

It went beyond being the tallest point in the city; some gentle probing had revealed that Castiel had never made this his typical perch, either. Too high to see what was happening, he said. "And when it's raining, you can't even see the ground."

That was definitely true tonight; the best that Dean could make out a thousand feet below was the golden halos of the streetlights as they illuminated the rain the wind whipped around them. Dean had pulled his hood forward to ward off the drops and the wind, but Castiel didn't seem to pay them any mind, his hair slick against his head until he carded his hands through it, standing it up at odd angles.

It was the isolation, Dean decided. They were effectively cut off from the rest of the city, a haven of privacy that only they could share. The sounds of the city were far off and muffled by distance and the rain. There was an intimacy in it, one that Dean couldn't help but quietly acknowledge as he let the focus of his eyes soften in the direction Castiel was looking, over the city to the dark smudge that was Lake Washington.

"I found where he's keeping my Blade," Castiel said without preamble after the police bands had failed to notify them of anything interesting.

Dean shot a glance to the side. The angel's tone was far too casual. "Oh?" he prompted.

"He has a house on Mercer Island. A large house."

"Of course he does." Dean peered back in the direction of Lake Washington. Mercer Island rose from the center of it, a haven of houses just on the verge of mansions, when they weren't outright palaces. "And? What's the problem?"

"It's warded." Castiel shook his head. "Against me specifically, which is either an insult or a backhanded compliment. I can't get near it."

"Makes sense, if your pigsticker can take him out, too." Stretching, Dean swiped a finger across the control panel to wake up the computer. "You're very pointedly not asking me a favor," he said.

"How astute of you. No. I'm not. If he's warded his home against me, he knows I'm not dead, which means he knows you're not dead, either." Castiel leveled an even look at him. "He's probably perfectly content knowing I'm weaponless. You, on the other hand, he has no qualms about killing." Castiel hesitated. "He's done it before."

Dean swallowed. "I take it you're not talking about him just leaving me for dead in that building."

Shaking his head scattered several drops from Castiel's hair. "He usually waits until he can do it in front of me. For the impact, you understand." Bitterness colored his voice. "He loves his high drama."

"Cas," Dean ventured, "Have you ever considered maybe...staying away from me, in any of these umpty-zillion realities?" He grinned at the end, hopefully enough to show that he was joking.

"Not for long." Castiel's answering grin was slightly abashed. "But then, it's usually your fault. You come looking for me first."

"That's reassuring." Dean twisted to look in the direction of the lake again. "So which big house is it? And will it work on him if you're not holding it?"

Castiel blinked, taken aback. "Anyone can wield it, but – Dean, I can't ask _that_ of you."

Dean shook his head. "Douchenut burned down a building to try and take you out. There were _people_ in that building, people who had nothing to do with his little grudge match." The laugh that bubbled up in his chest felt sour. "Granted, my brother being a homicide detective makes actually killing someone a little awkward..."

"Don't do it." Castiel pinned Dean with a look more demanding than pleading. "If you're going in there, just get the blade and get out."

Dean put on his best fake pout. "Can't I stab him just a little bit?"

"Dean –"

"I'm kidding. Jesus." Dean swiped at the screen on his wrist, bringing up a satellite view of Mercer Island. "Which house?"

Castiel leaned over to survey the screen at Dean's wrist. This close, the damp scent of rain and wet feathers was overridden by something Dean couldn't place; it reminded him simultaneously of lightning and snow. "This one," Castiel said, pointing to a house some distance away from the others on the shore.

Dean considered it as Castiel leaned back. "You're sure? I'm shit at breaking and entering. I don't wanna do it twice."

"I'm sure." Castiel hesitated. "You...don't have to do it at all, you know. You probably shouldn't."

Shaking his head, Dean sent the navigation to his HUD with a tap at the screen. "Guy's got a nuke for my favorite angel. If that makes me nervous, then I can't imagine how you sleep at night."

"I don't sleep." Castiel's voice was characteristically flat; Dean couldn't tell whether he had missed the 'favorite angel' dig or was ignoring it completely. Probably the latter.

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me." Dean rose from his crouch, stretching as his thrusters hummed to life. "Thirty minutes, max. Don't wait up."

* * *

><p>The house Castiel had specified had one light in an upper story window, leaving the rest of the vast expanses of glass dark and empty. A gust of wind pushed at Dean; he let it, rather than waste energy hovering in a fixed position as he considered his options. The chill of it bit into the exposed skin on his hands and face, and not for the first time he cursed himself for neglecting once again to get some gloves for nights like this. January weather was not the most forgiving at two hundred feet in the air.<p>

There was an attached garage. That looked to be his best bet: break down a garage door and get into the house that way. There would probably be a burglar alarm. Hell, a house like that, there would probably be actual security guards.

Dean didn't give himself time to reconsider the wisdom of his gallant gesture. Leaning forward, he engaged his main thruster at maximum.

Sleet pelted his face, stinging his cheeks, and he gritted his teeth as the house zoomed closer –

And his HUD fuzzed with static and went dark, along with all the lights on the island, just a split-second before his thrusters sputtered and died.

For a moment that stretched into infinity, Dean continued forward on his trajectory, but with a great yawning lurch in his stomach, the forward velocity rapidly began to give way to gravity.

"Shit," Dean said, which seemed to summarize his dilemma rather aptly. "Not again," he added, because from more than a hundred feet, this fall was going to take a _long_ time.

It wasn't until he was close enough to the surface of the lake to see the white-capped waves being raised by the wind that it occurred to him how far away from land he still was.

"Oh shit," he gasped, more vehemently this time, "shit, shit, shit –"

The wind made it impossible to arrange his body into something more suitable to landing on water, tossing him like a rag doll in disorienting twists until a sudden calm just above the surface of the lake, leaving him sprawled and not quite feet-first, and he had the presence of mind to gulp in one deep breath before –

**_COLD_**.

The sharp pain in his back and legs and neck, the sudden tingling in his fingertips that meant something had happened to some important nerve, even the impact with the water was not enough to override his body's shrieking response to how _COLD_ the water was. Reflex made him gasp, despite the breath of air he already had, and the near-freezing water that rushed in instead of air stabbed at his throat, forcing a gag that was even more ill-advised than the gasp.

Darkness pressed in on all sides even more than the water, the night lights of the city doing nothing to pierce through the surface of the lake, and as Dean struggled to reverse the panic that was rapidly taking control, he realized he had no idea how deep he was. There was no way to tell.

_Up_, his mind screamed at him, only just managing to be heard over the continued klaxons of _COLD_, but as Dean feebly tried to move his legs, pain accompanied their refusal to comply. One arm was equally useless, and with dismay that only stoked the fires of his panic, he realized that he was in fact sinking.

The thrusters. They were too heavy. He scrabbled at the buckles with his one good hand, only to find that his fingers were already cramped with cold, and he tried kicking again only to be met with the same flopping uselessness and he wondered why it was taking so damn long to heal a broken leg when he'd made sure he'd eaten a giant meal beforehand...

With astonishing clarity, a memory from twenty years ago played in his mind, a doctor speaking with gravity to Dean and his father: _"We should be able to slow down Sam's healing response and have enough time to operate by making him cold enough to put him into hypothermic shock."_

If Dean could have groaned without further jeopardizing his life, he would have.

His chest heaved in a desperate attempt to gasp a breath. Dean could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he finally loosened a buckle enough to slide the main thruster from his shoulders. It dragged at his legs, catching at his thighs, and he tried to kick again to get free.

This time pain, a hot smear that flashed lights at the edge of his vision, lanced up both his legs in vivid agony and he gritted his teeth as the tight straps dragged themselves down his legs and finally came free. The main thruster quickly disappeared into the black depths of the lake, and with his good arm Dean began clawing his way up.

Ash was going to kill him. He hadn't even had the new rig for two weeks yet.

_COLD_, his body reminded him, and he tried to give himself a mental shake, to pull himself together. He couldn't have been under for more than half a minute, not nearly enough time for true hypothermic shock to start disorienting him, and yet it took a worrying amount of effort to string two thoughts together. Even the frantic edge granted to him by barely controlled panic felt sluggish and thick.

It was very dark this deep under the water. Impossible as it was to tell how far down he had plunged, as his lungs burned and head began to pound in time with his heart, Dean slowly realized that there was no way he was going to make it to the surface.

_I'm going to drown._

_What a stupid way to die._

Dean couldn't tell if the calm that stole over him was the relief at having given up, exhaustion, or hypothermia beginning to take its toll, but it was certainly better than the overwhelming frenzy. It was dark enough that he couldn't tell at first when his vision began to dim, and he rallied to struggle feebly once more as water rushed down his throat, but all in all, he supposed there were worse ways to go.

* * *

><p>It was so friggin cold.<p>

"Don't struggle." A sharp command. Dean stopped trying to escape his bonds immediately, sagging against them. Wind stung his cheeks, so cold it nearly felt warm.

"I've got you, Dean. You'll be all right. But not if I drop you."

"Cold," Dean managed to mumble.

"I know." His bonds became tighter. Not bonds, he realized dimly. Arms. "We're nearly there."

_Good_, Dean tried to say, but his chest hurt, and it was much easier to lean against the warmth and just breathe.

* * *

><p>It wasn't until he was shivering, almost spasming, under every blanket he and Ash owned that Dean's mind began to process things clearly. He stared down into the cup of hot water he was holding and blinked twice.<p>

"Yeah," he said in response to Ash's question, not entirely certain what it had been but feeling as though he should answer in the affirmative.

"He really oughta go to the hospital," Ash began, clearly not talking to him.

"No," Dean said, as Castiel shook his head and said, at the same time, "He doesn't like hospitals."

"No one likes hospitals," Ash began, but Dean held up a hand. A mistake; the mound of blankets shifted and laid his arm bare, letting a draft in near his skin.

"I'm breathing. Everything's working now. I'm good."

"Your lips are blue, man." Ash reached out to tug the blankets back around Dean. Dean nodded once, gratefully, and took a sip of the hot water.

"Here." The edge of the bed sank as Castiel took a seat next to Dean, pulling him close with one arm. Dean looked up in surprise as he heard feathers rustle and a weight press against his shoulders and side.

"I'm not a damn baby bird," he muttered, but he didn't particularly feel like pushing out from under the wing curved around him. The warmth that was beginning to leach through the blankets only partly had anything to do with his reluctance.

"You were probably in the water a good fifteen minutes," Ash said, crouching down in front of the bed, settling on his heels. "At least, that's how I figure it, working backwards from the time of the power surge."

"What power surge?" Dean asked. The warmth radiating from Castiel's wing curled through him like ink in water, and drowsiness was making his eyelids heavy.

"Electromagnetic pulse that took out the power grid on Mercer Island. Took out all the electronics on your rig, too."

Dean winced. "I had to ditch it. I'm sorry, man."

Ash made an impatient sound. "This time it wasn't your fault. Dude was waiting for you. Knew how to take you out." He grinned. "Besides. I didn't like 2.0 anyway. 3.0's much sexier." He glanced at Castiel with an impossible-to-read expression. "And if you're thawing out, I'm going to head to the shop to work on it. You'll be needing it sooner rather than later. And three's a crowd."

Dean blinked groggily. "Three's a...what?"

Ash winked as he popped to his feet. "Later." He pointed a finger at Castiel. "Get him warm, you hear me? Whatever means necessary."

Castiel nodded somberly as Ash slung a backpack over one shoulder. Too late, Dean worked out what Ash had been hinting at, and his "Hey!" was met only by the slamming of the door.

* * *

><p>"I don't think you should be sleeping just yet."<p>

Dean groaned as his shoulder was jostled, sleep still heavy in his eyes. "Not asleep," he mumbled as he reached up to rub them. Rough canvas scraped across his cheek and he paused, opening his eyes to examine the sleeve of the overcoat, only just realizing the plain white shirt was all Castiel wore on his torso. "You gave me your coat?"

Castiel nodded. "Both of them. Even after I got you breathing again, you were too cold to shiver, and…" He shrugged.

Dean blinked as vague memory surfaced, tinged with the blur of semi-consciousness. Pressure on his chest. Coughing, gagging, the reflex uncontrollable as he weakly pushed himself to hands and knees, only to collapse back to the stony ground. Clothes suddenly and inexplicably dry, but doing nothing to reflect body heat he didn't have. A jacket being swung over his shoulders, an overcoat following, and then arms gathering him up like a newborn and a lurch into the sky...

"Oh," was all Dean said, letting the blanket fall slightly from his shoulders to look down at the coat. Then, after a moment's thought, "Wait. How did you get them off?"

"What?" Castiel turned his head, shifting on the bed to get a better look at Dean.

"These." Dean reached out and tapped the edge of the wing still curled protectively around him. "Seems like they'd make getting clothes on and off a bitch."

"I don't know," Castiel admitted. "I've never had to take clothing off before. Not here, anyway." He stretched his other wing experimentally; it nearly reached to the wall as he unfurled it. "This is the first time my wings have been an actual physical manifestation, and I don't understand it. They've always been largely metaphorical. They shouldn't even work; my vessel doesn't have the musculature to move them and they're far too small to achieve any lift…" he trailed off, eyes softening as he stared into middle space. "But since meeting Metatron, I'm beginning to wonder if they're physical constructs at all."

"They seem real enough to me," Dean offered, raking his fingers through the dense feathers that lay against his shoulder. They trembled in his wake, standing up slightly before smoothing back down again.

"They've always been real," Castiel pointed out. "Even in the few cases where I've been human, I still felt the weight of them, even if I didn't know what it was. Only a handful of times have I been without…"

"You've been human?" Dean asked, when it was clear Castiel was not going to continue his train of thought without prompting.

"On occasion." Castiel raised an eyebrow as Dean's stomach emitted a loud grumble, then pointed at the bottle of protein drink that stood on the nightstand with three other bottles just like it. "I know the routine by now. Bottoms up."

Grimacing in anticipation of the cloyingly sweet vanilla flavor that he was going to be choking down, Dean reached for a bottle. Drinking from it gave him sufficient reason to delay asking his next question, one that had surfaced some time ago and he'd never found the appropriate time to ask.

"Cas," he ventured when the bottle was empty and his stomach set to work with a wave of mild queasiness, "What do you do when I'm straight?" When the angel did not immediately answer, Dean rushed to add, "I – I mean, I have been straight, in some of these...these realities, right?"

"You have," Castiel confirmed quietly. "And in cases where our respective genders and orientations don't facilitate a...romantic relationship, we often enjoy a friendship that is intensely profound."

Dean nodded, but an earlier phrase had stuck in his mind. "Respective genders...you've been a woman?"

"As have you."

Dean let out a disbelieving chuckle. "Wasn't that weird?"

"You've been an octopus. That was weirder."

Dean blinked. "Never elaborate on that. Please."

"Why the sudden interest in your other selves?" Castiel asked softly, as Dean placed the empty bottle carefully back on the nightstand. "You've been resistant at best to the whole notion."

"No reason." His stomach was churning too much to toss back another shake, which was a pity; he could use another pause to gather his thoughts. "I was just wondering...you're so – I don't wanna say _attached_ to me but – I just wondered how you deal with it when I'm straight."

"With difficulty," Castiel replied. His brow furrowed. "Are you trying to tell me that you're straight?"

"No," Dean answered hurriedly. "I mean – mostly, maybe? It's not as though I get a lot of opportunity to...what?" he asked as Castiel began to chuckle.

"You. Not having a lot of opportunity."

Dean did his best to glare, feeling somehow as though he were at the butt of a joke he didn't get. "I used to. Even before I got my rig, I could walk into any bar in Capitol Hill and everyone recognized me. It was like a grocery store: blond, brunette, male, female, drunk, sober, I had my choice." He rubbed the back of his neck, the blankets falling all the way away from his shoulder as he did so. He didn't move to replace them. "I didn't do it for long."

Castiel was silent, but Dean could hear his urge to continue anyway. He took a breath. "If all I wanted was sex, yeah, I've got plenty of opportunity for that. But there's not – one night stands just don't feel...close." He shook his head. "I usually ended up feeling worse. So I just stopped."

"And that's where Ash comes in," Castiel said, very slowly.

Dean's stomach jumped slightly, and it had nothing to do with the protein drink. "That something you just know about me too, or can you read me like a book?" he asked finally.

"No on both counts," Castiel replied. "He's the one who's easy to read." He looked down at his folded hands. "He cares about you. A great deal. I don't think he even knew he was praying to me when your power got cut, but if he hadn't, I wouldn't have known to come find you until it was too late."

"He prayed to you?" Dean asked, startled.

"In a sense. I think it was more along the lines of hoping out loud that I was there to keep you safe." Castiel paused, opened his mouth as though to continue, then hesitated. "Am I causing...difficulties?" he asked finally.

Exhausted as he was, it took several moments for Dean to understand what the angel was alluding to. He took a breath before choosing his words carefully. "Aside from my brother, Ash is the best friend I've ever had. There is nothing and no one I'd trust more in that chair watching my back when I'm out there. We've been through a lot – a _lot_ – of shit together. That said..." he trailed off as words failed him. "We figured out a long time ago that in certain respects, we're oil and water," he finished. "We knew it from the start. Didn't even go down that road. Anything we did was...just something we did when there was nothing else to do and it was better than the alternatives." Dean shrugged. "You've met him. He's so aggressively chill that it just worked out."

"Since I met him at the hospital, I'd assumed that I'd be..." Castiel stopped, frustrated. "I've run into it before," he said after a moment. "It's rare that you're not with someone already. And you tend to be very devoted. I've learned to step carefully."

Dean considered that. "Cas," he said after a moment, "you could stand to be a little more reckless."

It was possible Dean imagined the tiny shudder that swept through the wing still snug against his shoulder. "Duly noted," Castiel said, nodding thoughtfully. He turned to look at Dean, then past Dean at the protein shakes still on the bedside table. "Are you still hungry?"

Dean shook his head. "Ate a lot before I headed out earlier. Works better to preload than try to catch up afterward. I'm good."

"Good." Castiel's eyes met Dean's, and Dean felt pressure against his back as the wing pulled him roughly closer. The bottom fell out of his stomach as Castiel rested one hand against the back of Dean's neck, bringing him the rest of the way to meet the angel's lips.

A sense of great satisfaction thrilled through him, a delicious counterpoint to the prickle of goosebumps as Castiel's fingers curled in the short hairs at the back of his neck, and Dean reached out to pull at the small of Castiel's back, bringing him closer. Castiel responded in kind, and Dean suppressed a shiver as tongues met like wet silk. There was cold against his back as the wing was pulled away, but a moment later he was reclining against the bed, Castiel atop him, his warm weight pressing Dean into the nest of jumbled blankets.

Castiel leaned back slightly just for a moment, regarding Dean very seriously. "We need to warm you up," he said in a grave tone.

The next kiss made it very clear that Castiel did not intend to speak again for some time.

* * *

><p>The pounding at the door was impatient, and it jolted Dean into immediately disoriented wakefulness. He blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the weight over his back. He didn't own any blankets that heavy.<p>

Abruptly he turned over and sat up, the wing stretched atop him sliding limply into his lap. Dean couldn't stop the sleepy grin from stretching across his face as his eyes followed the swooping lines of it to the back it was attached to. Castiel lay sprawled on his stomach, the other wing drooping over the side of the bed to trail the longer feathers along the floor. Even as Dean tried to unobtrusively sidle out from under the wing without waking the angel, Castiel's eyelids fluttered open.

"Thought you didn't need to sleep," Dean murmured, stretching.

"I don't need to eat, either. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it when I can." Castiel reached over to pull Dean back under his wing, and Dean let him until the pounding at the door sounded again.

"Dean!"

Dean shot a dirty look at the door. "Be right back," he said. "I have to go kill my brother."

A quick survey proved that his memories of the night before were accurate; the boxers were not technically his but he was at least clothed enough to meet the decency demands of answering the door. He yanked it open unceremoniously, making sure to let out an exaggerated yawn before focusing on Sam.

"What's wrong with your phone?" Sam demanded.

Dean considered for a moment. "It's probably at the bottom of the lake," he replied. "If not, it's completely bricked and just as useless."

Sam blinked, then apparently decided to not ask for details. "No one can get ahold of Ash, either. Linda called _me_ asking if you were okay when you didn't show up at the office. I've been trying to call you for an hour."

Dean rubbed at his eyes wearily. "Ash is in his lab. It's underground. And you know how he gets when he's focused. You could yell at him with a bullhorn and he wouldn't notice. I'm fine." He let his hands drop. "Can I borrow your phone to let Linda know she can call off the manhunt?"

"Yeah," Sam said distractedly, fishing the phone from his pocket and handing it over. "Can I come in? I need to ask you something."

"No," Dean replied quickly as he punched in the number. "Company," he grunted in elaboration, lifting the phone to his ear.

Sam had the grace to turn slightly red as he nodded, and leaned against the hallway wall with folded arms as Dean endured the scolding of Linda Tran, the person who actually did most of the work of running Dean's business. Dean made contrite noises in all the right places, and when it seemed as though she'd run out of breath, he jumped on the opportunity.

"Linda, I'm sorry. I didn't realize my phone was out. I'll get it replaced today. Staff meeting was routine, right? No surprises?"

"Except you not being there, it was fine. Are you planning on blessing us with your presence at all today?"

Dean winced at the clipped tone. Linda was pissed. "Yes, ma'am. I got a little inconvenienced last night, and I was sleeping it off." He ignored the scoff of disbelief Sam didn't bother muffling as Linda gasped.

"Dean, you need to be careful out there," she said, immediately shifting into protective mother bear mode. "Are you all right?"

"Fine now," Dean assured her.

"Did you –"

"Plenty to eat, slept a bunch, feeling peachy keen. I'll be in at –" Dean checked his watch, which thankfully still worked. "Noon sound good? I'll bring lunch."

The major driving force of organization in his life thus placated, Dean said a farewell and handed the phone back to Sam, who shook his head as he shoved it back in his pocket. "Inconvenienced, huh?" he asked, shooting a look over Dean's shoulder and then at Dean's bare chest.

Irritation flared in Dean's chest. "Breaking all my limbs and drowning was a bit inconvenient, yes," he snapped. "But go ahead and keep judging."

Taken aback, Sam snapped his mouth shut. "Sorry," he muttered.

Dean nodded. "You've got proof of life. Can I go back to bed now?"

Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. "When will you be free this afternoon? I need to talk to you about something. Official business. Freelance work."

Dean grimaced. "I'm kind of out of commission until I can get a working rig again, man. I don't know how long Ash is gonna take."

"This won't need your rig," Sam said, voice warming with enthusiasm. "Better if you don't have it, in fact. I've got a lead on Bela Talbot. I need someone else she can't zap and leave flat-footed."

"I – I'll think about it," Dean hedged. If he never saw the cat burglar again it would be too soon. She may have done no lasting physical damage, but the wound to his pride still smarted. "I'll get a new phone and give you a call before I swing by the station. All right?"

"All right." Sam lifted a hand in farewell, then gestured at his head. "You've got a...feather or something in your ha–" He stopped, color draining from his face as his features went slack in disbelief.

Dean smirked. "See you later, Sam." The satisfaction he felt at closing the door in his brother's shocked face was perhaps a bit petty, but it felt good.

* * *

><p>The sheets were still warm as Dean slid into them, already growing used to the sensation of Castiel draping a wing over his shoulders as he pulled Dean close.<p>

"I think we've been discovered," Dean said as he closed his eyes, letting drowsiness take its hold on him once again.

"It doesn't take long," Castiel replied sleepily.

Dean took a deep breath, listening to his heart beat as he tried to push away all his concerns for the day's agenda, when he suddenly sat bolt upright.

"Cas. That's what we need."

"What?" Castiel pushed himself up as well, eyes alight with curiosity.

"A cat burglar."


	6. Chapter 5

"Dean, you have no idea what you're asking."

"I do, actually."

"The warrants alone – and you know I have to leave my badge behind to do any vigilante work –"

"I've never had a badge and I'm doing just fine."

"That's just it. You've never had a badge. You've never had to answer to a higher authority than yourself. You've never had a chance to attain a higher authority than yourself. I've – Dean, it's taken me almost half my life to get this far. I do one wrong thing with my badge off and it's gone for good."

"How many criminals have you been able to put away because of Cas?"

"That's not the point."

"No, the point is some dude has the one thing that can kill him. And I nearly got killed trying to get it. Oh, and the dude turned a tower to ashes to try to get both of us, which I'm pretty sure counts as an act of terrorism."

"And said dude is completely untouchable without solid evidence. Even with your screen captures, if I tried to get the warrants to investigate Marvin Doherty –"

"Which returns us to vigilante work."

"Or we can wait for the FBI to come up with something. I get to keep my job, and I get to put away an art thief who goes around killing people instead of bargaining with her for her release and subsequent consequence-free burglary of the richest man in the country."

"You hate the FBI."

"I hate when the FBI takes away my case. This isn't my case. Bela is. Look, Dean, you're – you've got a thing for Cas, okay? I get it. And you're a team now, or whatever. I get that, too. But just because there are statutes in place for vigilante off-duty work doesn't mean it's something that I can do."

"Is that the only thing getting in the way? Because I can do it without you. You don't have to take off your badge at all. Just get me the bargain with Bela."

* * *

><p>The Seattle Art Museum was sparsely populated; the early evening hour did not lend itself to many interested patrons. Dean casually walked up to a painting, a little too close to the woman who had been standing there and studying it for some time.<p>

"Come here often?" he asked, staring straight ahead at the dashes of color.

"Sometimes," she replied, and took a step back, only to turn and encounter Sam. He wasn't uniformed, but there was a certain bearing that even off-duty cops had, and Dean could see Bela's eyes turn calculating as they darted around the room, looking for exits.

"Don't even," Dean said warningly. "The floor is locked down. It's just you, me, and Sammy here." He ignored the glare that Sam gave him. "And your bag of tricks doesn't work on me."

"You were at the Burke," Bela said, nodding with recognition. "The Quick Healer with the jet pack."

"And you were here a few weeks ago," Sam said in the same light conversational tone she was using. "The Zapper who killed a security guard."

If Dean had not been watching her face very carefully, he would have missed the shadow that flitted over it before she regained her perfect composure. "An accident. I'm not in the business of killing minimum-wage security goons." She tossed her hair, clearly trying to appear cavalier, but Dean suspected it was due to nerves. "I suppose you're going to try to arrest me."

"That's the idea," Sam agreed, reaching into his jacket pocket for his set of handcuffs.

Dean had been expecting the blast of electricity that drove him to his knees; he was actually surprised she had taken so long to chat before hitting them with it. Sam toppled to one side, an expression of surprise and pain locked on his face, and Dean watched as Bela strode quickly to an emergency exit.

His muscles had regained just enough control for him to be able to take a breath as Bela tried the handle. "Locked," he called, and though his voice wasn't loud, it echoed in the empty wing of the museum. "I gotta say, first you return to the scene of a crime, then you let us get the jump on you?" Sore, but once again working, Dean's muscles quivered as he regained his feet. He tried not to let it show.

"This exhibit is new," Bela said negligently, abandoning her tugging at the door handle. "And I haven't seen a 'Water Lilies' in years." She crossed her arms and leaned against the door. "Help me get out of here and there's a paycheck in it for you. More than whatever pittance you get from the police department."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Sweetheart, my company bids on the contract for the Space Needle's windows next month. The vigilante deal is my _hobby._"

Bela didn't bat an eye. "Double that, then. Triple. You could retire, even."

"Not interested."

The tiny movement in her jaw was the only clue to Bela's exasperation. "Fine. Help me out of here and I won't kill the cop."

"You won't kill him anyway," Dean replied. "It's not your style. You don't kill; you incapacitate." He gestured at Sam on the ground, who was doing a fantastic job at pretending to still be immobilized. "He's willing to work with you. Manslaughter instead of murder. You'll still get socked for Grand Theft, but –"

"What's it to you?" Bela demanded. "You're not a cop, and money clearly isn't an object."

"This is my city," Dean replied, "and –"

He didn't get a chance to finish.

There was no explosion, no sudden burst of energy, not a single sound. One moment he'd been talking, and the next, the entire wing was consumed by roaring flames, the sudden heat causing swirling currents of air that rushed around them like a desert wind.

"What the?" Sam pushed himself up with astonishing grace while Dean spun, attempting to find an opening in the wall of flames.

"Get over here!" he bellowed, gesturing to Bela, who had already begun backing toward the middle of the room away from the walls, eyes wide and all semblance of careful control fled from her face. "Get down. Away from the smoke," Dean said, grabbing her elbow and pulling her down to her knees next to him and Sam. He pointed at one of the hallways. "Windows through there. Sam, you got your buddies on your radio?"

"They're already on it," Sam said faintly, watching the flames dance along the ceiling with trepidation.

"I'll go first. If he sees me leave the building, he might just leave it alone and chase me."

"Who?" Bela demanded as Dean stripped out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The leather under the Gore-tex would hopefully avoid bursting into flames longer than the loose cotton of her blouse, though he didn't have high hopes for her hair.

"The douchenut who likes setting buildings on fire," he replied grimly. "I've seen fire like this before. He knows I'm here."

"The entire building is going up," Sam said, head turning hastily at the sound of a ceiling tile crashing to the ground. "Did he wire it with _napalm_? How did we miss this?"

"Less chatting, more getting to the windows," Dean instructed, swallowing the notes of panic that twisted in his stomach. "Hands and knees. Let's go."

"We're three floors up," Bela argued shortly, though she didn't hesitate to follow Dean's lead.

"If you'd rather stay here, be my guest," Dean snapped back. The marble floor beneath his palms was already growing warm, and the wall of windows was nowhere in sight. It was only the high ceilings of this floor of the gallery that kept the suffocating heat and smoke away from them, but even that would not last long – and he wasn't sure how long the floor would hold out before collapsing under the heat and weight.

"West side of the building," Sam was saying into his radio. "A civilian and a vigilante." He pitched his voice to carry over the roar of the flames. "At least two dozen other patrons are trapped," he called to Dean.

"Dammit," Dean muttered. He shook his head and wiped a hand across his face to keep sweat from dripping into his eyes. The heat waves made the entire room waver, and the hallway he'd meant to lead them through was a flame-enveloped gateway to Hell. "Better include us in that, then."

Sam looked dumbstruck. "But –"

Dean gestured. "You want to walk through that?"

With an exaggerated sigh, Bela pushed herself to her feet, tucking her hair into the neck of Dean's jacket. Bent nearly double and with her hands protecting her eyes, she dashed through the wreath of flames, stumbling once but recovering just before she disappeared past the flames into the room beyond.

Dean stared after her. "Okay then." He looked to Sam. "I think it's a point of pride that we get out of this building, now."

Sam let out an explosive breath. "I'll never be able to arrest her if I don't."

Only running would do; if they took the time to crawl they would never make it. After a gulp of air that was rapidly becoming too hot to breathe, Dean bent at the waist and mimicked Bela, running through the flames of the hallway and trying his best to ignore the blistering of his skin as the heat turned his sweat to steam. He was sure his hair was singeing, and he spared a thought to Sam's longer dress-code violating locks as he burst out of the hellish hallway into the larger room beyond.

Bela twisted, a tiny handgun pointed at the windows. "Your pants are on fire," she commented, voice shaking slightly before she turned back to the window and squeezed off two shots.

Dean looked down at the flame licking up the right leg of his jeans and he slapped it out, heedless of the burns to his hand. They'd already mostly healed when Sam burst out of the hallway, hair miraculously intact, and drew his own gun to aim at the window as he strode forward.

Dean shook his head to clear it as he glanced around the room. Two walls of windows made a corner of it that was blessedly not on fire, and he imagined he could feel the temperature gradient as he paced towards them. The bullets were not doing much to shatter the triple-paned glass; they left neat holes with some spiderwebbing cracks, but nothing more.

Behind them, the drywall of the hallway collapsed with a whooshing sound. All three of them turned to watch the flames expand at the sudden pile of new fuel, and then Bela and Sam continued shooting the window with renewed fervor.

"I'm out," Bela announced, shoving the spent gun back into her pocket.

"Me too." Sam glared at the window and stepped forward to kick at it, but even with the dozen holes, the glass held. "What now?"

Before Dean could open his mouth to respond, a flicker of movement caught his eye, and he grinned as the glass of the window shattered inward with a crystalline crash. Sam and Bela both jumped back, but not fast enough to avoid the collision with Castiel as he plowed into the room, tiny shards of diamond-like glass falling around him.

He jumped back to his feet and had pulled Bela to hers before his gaze landed on Dean. "What are you doing here?" he asked as he bent to lift Bela.

"Excuse you," Bela protested as Castiel cradled her to his front like a child, but her mouth snapped shut in amazement as she noticed his wings for the first time.

"Get her out of here," Dean replied, stepping forward to survey how far the drop was. "I can meet you down there. Sam?"

Sam looked at the sidewalk three stories below and sighed heavily as he shoved his gun back into its holster. "Not everyone jumps out of burning buildings for fun, Dean."

"I can come back for you," Castiel offered as he shook his wings out in preparation.

"No. There are more people that actually need your help." Sam shrugged his shoulders as though he were preparing wings of his own. "Let's do this."

Neither Dean nor Sam succeeded in converting their hard landings into forward rolls; Dean allowed himself to pitch forward onto the asphalt and blink away the stars in his vision, gritting his teeth at the smudge of pain as the bones of his legs knit themselves back together. He could hear Sam groaning next to him, and two paramedics jumped out of the aid car that had just pulled up and knelt down by them, barking questions.

"We're good," Dean grunted, testing the leg that felt the most intact. It bent with only a few strange clicking sounds, and he nodded. "Yeah. We're good."

"Speak for yourself," Sam said haltingly as he sat up, rubbing at one knee. "I landed on my kneecaps."

"Quick Healers," Dean said by way of explanation to the startled paramedics. "We're fine." He waved them away as he forced himself to his feet, offering a hand to Sam.

It took a great deal of effort to hobble across the street to where Castiel landed and deposited Bela, and Dean was accustomed to shrugging off pain; he was impressed with how Sam was comporting himself as he pulled the handcuffs from his pocket again and Castiel launched himself back into the air. Bela did not struggle as Sam wearily recited her Miranda rights, and Dean followed her gaze up to the third floor of the museum.

"There were two Monets in that exhibit," she said dully, the leaping flames reflecting in her eyes. "A Renoir. The largest collection of Degas in the country."

"My heart weeps for you and your lost paycheck," Sam replied coldly.

She turned, her eyes growing sharp. "There will never be painters like that again," she said, her voice dripping with malice. "The world is a worse place without those pieces."

Dean blinked. "You weren't casing the joint," he said slowly.

Bela turned to him, exhaustion plain at the corners of her eyes. "You can't be a good art thief without loving art," was all she said before she returned her gaze back to the third floor.

* * *

><p><em>You awake?<em>

Dean blinked furiously, focusing on the glowing screen of his phone. Castiel shifted next to him, more because Dean had moved than because the angel was truly stirring from his drowse. Dean slid out from under the wing draped over his shoulders and padded barefoot to the tiny balcony, closing the sliding glass door shut behind him as he thumbed the "call back" icon.

"Sam?" he asked when his brother picked up. "It's three am."

"You're still awake."

"Yeah, well, I fight crime at night. I have an excuse." Dean said, leaning against the glass door and shivering. "And I _was_ asleep." Mostly. "So spill."

"I'm in."

Dean's mouth snapped shut mid-yawn. "What?"

"It's bigger than a sword or an art thief. This guy is just going to keep torching buildings to get to you, isn't he?"

"He's certainly building a pattern. But I thought you were going to let the FBI handle it."

"Even they're going to run into obstructions. It'll take years for them to get enough evidence to arrest him. And they can be encouraged to look the other way. I can't." A pause while Sam sighed. "I can get everything in one night if I leave behind my badge."

Dean rubbed his eyes. "You think he's dumb enough to leave evidence hanging around his house? One of his houses? He has about three dozen."

"I have to try. You and Bela go in. I follow. She gets Cas's sword, I sweep for evidence."

"Sam –"

"That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

* * *

><p>It was just past two in the afternoon when Bela emerged from the courthouse. Her shirt and jeans were the same smoke-smeared garments she'd worn to jail the night before, and her hair hung limply about her face. Dean watched her survey her surroundings before spying Dean, rolling her eyes, and turning on her heel to walk in the opposite direction.<p>

"What kind of greeting is that?" he called, jogging after her.

"It wasn't," she replied curtly.

"I saved your life and I don't even get a hello?"

"You didn't save my life," she retorted. "The angel did. You can piss off."

"Right." Dean let her get a few steps away before calling after her, "There was a Rodin that got lost in the fire, too."

Her steps slowed. He pressed on. "Just a bronze cast, of course – but they're not casting any more Rodin replicas. And there was a permanent Van Gogh display on the second level. That got roasted, too."

She had stopped now, her shoulders thrown back, chin held high. "And?" she said finally, as Dean approached.

"I know who's responsible," Dean said quietly. "And as it happens, he has something that belongs to our mutual angel friend. Something that he'd dearly like to hold onto."

Bela shook her head and began walking again. "Get it yourself. I don't fancy coming up with another six-figure bail."

"We need you," Dean continued, keeping pace just behind her. "That's why I was there yesterday. To negotiate."

"Unless you want to 'negotiate' waiving my sentence –"

"It's in the cards."

Bela continued for several more steps as though she hadn't heard before stopping so abruptly that Dean nearly ran into her. She turned, arms crossed, and looked up at Dean with a no-nonsense set to her mouth. "Do you like coffee?"

Dean raised an eyebrow.

"You're going to buy me coffee, and you're going to go over this plan of yours in detail." Her eyes narrowed. "And if I'm interested, we can talk about payment."

"Done." Dean offered her his arm. She glanced at it, sniffed, then began leading the way down the street without taking it. Dean shook his head in bemusement and followed.

* * *

><p>"I don't like it."<p>

Dean blinked. "Why not?" he demanded. He'd thought it a fairly good plan, and Sam had agreed – or at least had not protested too vehemently.

"It's messy. It leaves too much to chance. You don't know where the artifact is being kept, or if it's even being kept in that house. I have no information about security systems or the layout of the house. You not only want an artifact that could be hidden anywhere, you also want me to find incriminating evidence that puts Marvin Doherty behind the fires. And, oh yes, the house belongs to Marvin Doherty." Bela shook her head and brought the cup of coffee to her lips. "He has enough power and money to make trouble if he takes offense."

"We can get a warrant," Dean began weakly, but Bela shook her head again.

"If you could get one, you'd have one already, and the police department would be sending in their own teams. You need me because it's illegal."

Dean pressed his lips together. "Fine. We get you vigilante status with the state as part of your payment. Vigilantes get clemency from damn near everything if what they do leads to an arrest."

Bela raised a single amused eyebrow. "Do you not believe in homework? I'm a registered vigilante in Oregon already, which – unless they've changed state law in the last eight months – means I have license to operate along the entire West Coast."

"But you're an art thief," Dean said slowly.

The impatient look Bela leveled at him had edges like cut glass. "Just because a piece is in a museum doesn't mean the museum rightfully owns the piece," she replied with dangerous smoothness. "I'm a very specialized vigilante: I recover stolen property when legal channels fail. After all, isn't that what you're hiring me for?"

"So why'd you run?" Dean asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Because I didn't want to get caught," Bela replied with exaggerated patience. "Jail is unpleasant, and it can take the pencil pushers some time to find documentation if they don't really want to find it. Thus the very large sum of cash the courthouse is holding onto for me until I come back for it."

Dean shook his head. "Fine. Whatever. You're already a vigilante. You lose nothing by going in with me."

"No. Not you." Bela shook her head again, firmly. "Buildings have a tendency to go up in flames around you. I want someone else at my back until everything is secured."

"The Angel can't get near –"

"Not The Angel." Bela tapped the lid of her coffee cup. "Your brother is sitting behind me. He came in ten minutes ago. He'll do."

Dean had never been very good at poker faces. "Who ever said he was my brother?"

"Please. Do you think you're hiring me for my looks?" Bela's voice took on a pompous tone. "Detective Winchester and Cloudbreak, the brothers upholding the law from either side of it." She made a dismissive gesture. "You've been a hot topic for months in some crowds." She twisted in her chair to wave playfully at Sam, who did not appear surprised that Bela knew he was there, or perhaps he just hid it well.

"Hold on. Cloudbreak?" Dean asked.

"If you don't bother to pick a name, they tend to pick one for you," Bela replied easily, turning back to her coffee.

"That's the name of my computer," Dean protested, voice pitched so Sam could hear. Sam shrugged.

"And now it's the name of the handsome young Quick Healer with the jet pack," Bela replied sweetly. "You have to admit, it is evocative."

Vaguely irritated, Dean shook his head and beckoned Sam to join their small table. "So the plan is messy," he said as Sam folded himself into a chair. "What would you do to fix it?"

"I need floor plans," Bela replied immediately. "A member of the boys in blue to clear up any misapprehensions should a private security team take umbrage to my being there." Bela gestured expansively at Sam. "A copy of the electrical schematic of the house – preferably the neighborhood. Three days to plan it."

"One day," Sam interrupted. "There's already FBI on the scent that I have to cooperate with. I don't want them flashing their fancy badges at me and taking this out of my hands. And I'm not official while I'm in there. I don't know how much authority I can throw around."

"One day," Bela acquiesced. "And some equipment. Nothing fancy, but I can't ignore bullets like you two, so I'll want some Kevlar."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "And is that being noised about, too? That I'm a Quick Healer?"

Bela returned his look with one of thinly veiled disdain. "You were blinking three seconds after I hit you, and I watched you jump from a third story window and walk away from it without a scratch. Don't pretend I'm stupid."

Using his buzzing phone as an excuse to look away, Dean drew it from his inner jacket pocket and thumbed it on to read the text message from Ash.

_I got them. Get her price_.

"Say we can get you all these things," Dean said, tucking his phone back into his jacket. "What's in it for you?"

Bela's eyes darkened. "Had you asked me while I was still looking at the Monet, you'd need to wash every window in Seattle to make the down payment." She took a sip from her coffee, not breaking eye contact. "But that Monet doesn't exist anymore. So I think I'll take my cut out of the satisfaction I'll get making our dear Marv squirm."

Sam was unable to hide the expression of surprise. "You don't want anything," he clarified.

"Oh, I'll want assistance getting the murder charge smoothed into something a little more palatable," Bela assured him. "And ensuring that my registration is found in a timely manner to facilitate the grand theft being dropped. My car out of the impound lot. And...a date, I think. Dinner at El Gaucho would do nicely."

Dean blanched. "I...okay."

Bela's nose wrinkled. "Not with you."

"I'm married," Sam quickly interjected.

"Not that you two aren't fine specimens," Bela said patronizingly, "but I'm not looking for romance. I'm looking for aptitude, and the fourth participant in this conversation has that in spades." Dean's phone buzzed again, this time audibly vibrating the zipper of the pocket. Bela smirked. "Are you going to get that?"

Dean pulled the phone from the pocket, and was more surprised than he should have been to read the message there:

_She's good. I'm game._

Dean blinked down at it for several seconds before heaving a sigh. "Talbot," he said, extending a hand, "I believe we have ourselves a deal."

"You might as well call me by my own alias," Bela said with a wry twist to her lips as she took his hand. "La Foudre."

Sam snorted. "The Lightning? Really?"

"I didn't pick it." She tilted her head to the side. "What do you say, Cloudbreak?"

"I can't pronounce the fancy French 'r,'" Dean replied with a perfectly straight face. "But I gotta admit that The Lightning and Cloudbreak has a certain ring to it."

Dean's phone buzzed on the table again as they shook hands, the message visible on the unlocked screen.

_Technically it's The Lightning, Cloudbreak, The Vigilante Detective, The Guardian Angel, and The Engineer._

"At least I don't have a definite article," Dean muttered as he and Bela dropped hands. "All right. Let's get somewhere less public and figure out how to pull this off."

* * *

><p>The loft studio Dean and Ash shared had never been meant to house more than one person. With two and Ash's multitude of computer equipment, it was snug.<p>

With Dean, Ash, Ash's computer equipment, Sam, Bela, and Castiel with his thirteen-foot wingspan, it was definitely overcrowded.

"This feels like a slumber party," Bela had complained as, lacking chairs and a couch, they'd settled onto the edges of the beds, between which Ash had hauled the tiny kitchen table. "Shall we braid each others' hair?"

Her protests had stopped abruptly when Ash booted up the screen embedded in the table, replaced with a winsome expression of longing. Dean supposed he was rather cavalier about the ubiquity of Ash's toys; the table had been a source of irritation for him since he'd spilled cereal on it and had to withstand a week of the silent treatment. A table that couldn't be used as a table was just another computer, no matter how Ash tried to spin it.

Bela clearly had not agreed with Dean's philosophy as she manipulated the blueprints and schema on the surface, making notes and drawing diagrams that had Sam nodding thoughtfully. As the afternoon shaded into evening, Dean had begun to pay less and less attention as Bela and his brother worked out finer details that would have nothing to do with Dean.

Castiel had been silent, standing up at intervals to pace the small space near the door and stretch his cramped wings, and as the streetlights outside began to stir to life, he pulled Dean aside.

"I need to tell Sam the truth," he said in a low voice.

"The truth?" Dean asked, a thread of anxiety unraveling in the pit of his stomach.

"He thinks he's going against a normal human. There isn't anything that he can do that will even make Metatron vaguely uncomfortable. And – Sam doesn't get under Metatron's skin like you and I do, but Metatron still won't hesitate to harm him. I need to tell him everything – who I am, what I am, what Metatron is."

Dean licked his lips. "Taking Marvin – Metatron – down is Sam's price for helping us," he said, darting a glance at the table where Sam was studying a hallway schematic. "He's giving up a lot to do it."

"If his concern is keeping Metatron from harming the populace, he can still help with that," Castiel replied. "By getting me in. But he needs to understand the forces at work to be able to do that."

Sam must have felt eyes upon him, because he glanced over at their conclave with curiosity. Dean averted his eyes. "Sounds like you've already made your decision. Why tell me about it?"

Castiel's brow furrowed. "To explain why Metatron wants you gone so fervently, your involvement with me in other realities has to come to light. Sam is smart. Sooner or later, he's going to come to some conclusions I know you've been keeping quiet."

Dean shook his head. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. You're gonna have to talk fast to convince him of anything."

Nodding, Castiel rolled his shoulders, the feathers on the upper curves of his wings shivering before laying flat. "Sam," he said firmly as he approached the gathering around the table. "There are a few things you need to know."

* * *

><p>The grim cast to Sam's face was enough to make even Ash avoid breaking the silence. "So even if I find enough to arrest him –"<p>

"There isn't a jail cell in the entire world that could hold him," Castiel confirmed. "There are sigils that could incapacitate him for a time, but only for a time."

"So what's the point of all this?" Sam demanded, gesturing at the blueprints.

"You can't fight him," Castiel said, "but I can. I'll need my blade. And if you truly want him gone...I can facilitate that, but I need to get inside the house."

Before Castiel had even finished, Sam was shaking his head. "No. I can't let you kill him."

Dean was fairly certain Sam would not be able to stop Castiel doing anything he wanted, but Castiel was shaking his head too. "I don't think I could," he replied. "He's an archangel – more than that. I doubt I could give him much more than a nosebleed. But I can banish him from this reality and make it unlikely he can return."

"How?" Sam asked calmly. Dean couldn't help but be slightly impressed at the speed at which Sam had accepted and assimilated the information that had taken Dean weeks to swallow. Or perhaps he was simply playing along.

"There is some complicated sigilwork that will not only expel him from this reality, but hide it from him as well." Castiel looked to Dean. "I seem to remember telling you once that archangels can travel between realities at will. It's different from how seraphs – like me – do it. I..." He shook his head. "It's difficult to explain. Suffice to say that he isn't here the same way I am."

"He's a guest star," Bela piped up. "He changes things, but he's not in the regular cast of characters." One corner of her mouth twisted in a wry grin as Castiel looked to her, startled. "You're not my first brush with the metaphysical, Feathers."

Castiel continued glancing at her as he continued. "I'm going to need my Blade. And there are wards on the house that keep me away from it. Sigils, likely on each wall of the foundation. A line through them will destroy them."

"Or make them blow up in our faces," Bela countered.

"I can show you where to draw the lines," Castiel said, waving a hand. "There are likely all manner of sigils throughout the house, some of which could do me serious harm should Metatron activate them."

"I thought only the sword could hurt you," Sam interjected. "I thought that was the entire point of this recovery mission."

"The Blade is the only _weapon_ that can kill me," Castiel corrected. "The right sigils and spellwork could banish me back to Heaven, trap me, suppress my Grace to make me mortal enough to shoot me...even kill me." He did not quite smile. "But by and large, they can do the same to Metatron."

There was silence around the table until Ash cleared his throat. "So nothing really changes," he said, swiping a hand across the screen and making the blueprints spin. "But I have a few suggestions to make." Heads turned to him, Dean's in surprise: Ash was easily the most intelligent person he knew but wasn't the most stunning tactician. "Why are we worrying about sneaking in under the radar when history shows that Marvin will flat-out wipe out his own radar?"

Bela raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

Ash clapped Dean on the shoulder. "Dean flies in and draws Marv's attention, making him fire off the EMP. Bela, can you divert that to the electrical grid? Leave Dean alone, but take out the grid and make Marv think it worked?"

Bela chewed her lip for a moment. "How strong?" Ash replied with a series of numbers that sounded mostly like nonsense to Dean, but Bela nodded thoughtfully. "I can do one better. I can knock out all the communications to the island for an hour or two with that kind of charge – including cell phone towers."

"Perfect," Ash said with satisfaction. "Dean, you'll do a repeat performance of a few nights ago, but with less drowning. Bela and Sam go in and start searching for shiny swords and stuff on walls. Dean will rendezvous with Cas and wait until the wards go down, and then they're in. I'm babysitting you all through your HUDs."

"Okay," Dean said, holding up one hand. "Babysitting?"

Ash spread his hands. "You really think I was gonna let you losers have all the fun?" He pointed at Bela. "You can breach a Faraday cage, right?"

Bela snorted. "Of course."

"He's gotta have at least one of his rooms shielded against his own surges. Take it out." Ash cracked his knuckles. "But don't take out Dean's rig. It's shielded, too."

"That was my second question," Dean replied. "You've got a new rig ready for me this soon?"

"I never liked 2.0," Ash said dismissively. "I've been working on 3.0 since you strapped the last scrap heap on. 3.0's almost ready to fly. Few more tweaks will do it, if you can get down to the shop before the party tonight."

Bela stared at him. "He's the one that built your equipment?" she demanded of Dean before turning her attention to Ash. "I thought you were intel. What are you, some kind of rocket scientist?"

Ash raised an eyebrow as he leaned back. "I'm an experimental atmospheric propulsion engineer for Boeing," he replied, "formerly for NASA. So, yeah. Rocket scientist."

Bela stared, alternating her gaze between Ash and Dean. "Rocket scientist and darling of Seattle's high rise buildings," she said, shaking her head, "and you live in this dump?"

"Thank you," Sam said expansively, gesturing at the tiny loft apartment.

"I have another place," Ash said, to Dean's surprise, "but I like it here better."

"We're getting off track," Castiel interrupted.

"We're perfectly on track," Bela countered. "Planning to every detail reduces flexibility." She tapped the screen in front of her, bringing up the complex electrical schema. "The only one who has to handle fine specifics is me." She furrowed her brow. "It's a little more complicated than my usual jobs, but I like a challenge."

"These sigils," Sam said to Castiel. "What are they going to look like?" He handed the angel a stylus, and Castiel looked at the table in bemusement as Ash brought up a blank screen before setting the stylus to the surface.

"There will be several," he said, motions growing more confident as he sketched out what looked to Dean to be complicated scribbles. "A line has to go all the way through them to render them null. To prevent any sort of violent discharge, avoid intersecting any angles." He indicated an acute angle in one of the shapes, then drew a straight line through the sigil, showing them how it could be done without intersecting the angle. "If you see any circles on the ground, break them – they're traps intended for me." He studied the sigils for a moment before sighing. "I wouldn't put it past him to have some hidden underneath a rug, but you don't have time for redecorating."

"We'll do a thorough sweep," Sam promised. He hesitated. "You're...sure your sword is there, right?"

"Yes," Castiel replied without hesitation, then blinked. "One detail that may be unsettling: the sigils will likely be in blood."

Sam blanched. "Blood?"

"Makes them more effective," Bela supplied. "The more energy you feed into a sigil, the more it expels, and blood packs a lot of metaphysical punch."

Studying her carefully, Castiel set down the stylus. "There is not a large population in this reality familiar with sygaldry," he said slowly.

"I told you," Bela returned cooly, "not my first rodeo."

"Do we have to draw the lines in blood?" Dean interrupted. "Because that may be a problem. Sam and I don't do much bleeding."

"No," Castiel replied, tearing his eyes from Bela. "I have it on good authority that a permanent marker works just fine." Something in Castiel's tone and the way he almost, but not quite, winked at Dean gave Dean the impression that the "good authority" the angel had was Dean himself.

"Are we done?" Bela asked pointedly. "Because I have some pretty complex diagrams to memorize before tonight."

"And we gotta get you to the shop," Ash said to Dean, rising.

"I'll stay here with Bela," Sam said casually, but Bela shot him a knowing glance, clearly aware that he wasn't staying simply to keep her company. Dean figured that Bela was no stranger to posting bail and then leaving the country with prudent haste.

"I'll..." Castiel looked around the gathering, apparently only just coming to the conclusion that he had no preparations to make. "Go patrol," he finished, turning to the door. Pausing, he looked over his shoulder. "Thank you. You – none of you have to do this."

"Sure we do," Dean started to say, but Castiel had already slipped through the door.

* * *

><p>"That should do it."<p>

Dean gave a quick nod and stood, resisting the urge to twist and look at the unit on his back again. "You outdid yourself, man," he said, inspecting one of the gauntlets instead. "It barely feels like I'm wearing anything."

"Yeah, it's a good forty pounds lighter without the parachute," Ash said in a distracted tone as he typed into a console.

"What?" Dean asked, twisting around before he could stop himself. "What do you mean, without the parachute?"

"You never _use_ the parachute," Ash replied pointedly, leaning over to glare at Dean from behind the monitor. "And you spend exactly zero time in places where you could deploy a parachute without tangling up in electrical lines. There's a BASE jumper's canopy in there. Takes up less space and weighs less. Your thrusters will last longer and you'll have less drag. You still won't be able to use the canopy in the city, so don't even try, but if Bela can't divert the EMP tonight it'll buy you some time over the lake."

"Buy Cas some time, you mean," Dean muttered. "Because he'd have to be the one to catch me."

"Yeah, well," Ash said as he turned back to his monitor, "that's his job now."

Dean froze, suspicion flickering to life. "Ash?" he asked, taking a step toward the workshop's computer bank. "You good?"

"Don't," Ash said, shaking his head. "Just don't."

"Nuh uh." Dean pulled a chair from one of the desks and seated himself, straddling the back of it to fold his arms across the top. "You got bullshit to air, you do it before some renegade archangel gets the drop on me and kills me tonight."

For a moment it seemed as though Ash was going to ignore him, but then Ash pushed the keyboard tray back beneath the desk and leaned back in his chair, meeting Dean's eyes intensely. "I like Cas," he said bluntly. "But I liked what you and I had going. So it'll take a bit for everything to balance out."

"You and I didn't have anything going," Dean said.

"No," Ash agreed. "But we haven't had it going for fifteen years, and it was comfortable." He shrugged, folding his arms. "I'll get over it. I like Cas. You like Cas, which is more important. Cas likes you, possibly the most important factor in all this." He shrugged again. "It couldn't last forever."

Dean shook his head slowly in disbelief. "Dude, it's been..." He had to pause to think. "At least a year," he finished. "More than that."

"The option was there." Ash unfolded his arms and swiveled in the chair to face the computer again. "I'm not trying to be dramatic about it," he said as he pulled out the keyboard tray. "It's just a paradigm shift."

"Is that why you got another place?" Dean asked suddenly.

Ash grinned. "Nah. What, you think every time I went on a date, we went to a hotel? That's skeezy, even for me." He started typing again, eyes focused intently on the screen. "I've had another apartment for a couple years."

"So why stay?" Dean asked.

Ash shrugged. "Like I said. I like things the way they are." He glanced to the side with a knowing eyebrow. "Don't worry. I'll make myself scarce when Hot Wings is around."

Dean tried to frame a reply, but Ash stood and stretched. "T minus three hours. Gotta start getting things into position." He tossed Dean the pair of frames that housed the new HUD. "Give it a minute to boot up and I'll meet you back at our place."

Dean nodded, handing Ash the car keys, and slid the frames on so he wouldn't have to watch the man leave. "Our place," he mused as he watched the boot-up sequence. Except it wasn't, really, if Cas became a permanent part of the picture.

Dean shook his head and shouldered open the door to the stairwell that would lead to the street. Enough time to work that out if he lived through the night.

It was nearly showtime.


	7. interlude II

INTERLUDE

The roof of Dean's apartment building was not particularly high up, but perched as it was on the side of Capitol Hill, it still afforded an impressive view of the city as the hill stretched away below. Sam followed the lines of the streets with his eyes, tracing the route he'd take if he had to go back to work, or if he had to get to the freeway to go home.

A rush of wind was all that warned him he had company, and he turned as Castiel landed lightly behind him, falling into a crouch to absorb the impact of landing the last few feet. "Cas," Sam said in greeting.

"Sam," the angel replied.

A car alarm began going off somewhere, silenced after a few seconds. Sam took a breath. "What's it like up there?" That wasn't the question he had wanted to ask.

Castiel considered for a moment before he answered. "Cold." He shook his wings slightly before folding them against his back and coming to join Sam at the edge of the roof.

Sam huffed a single laugh through his nose as he realized that was going to be the extent of the angel's answer. He supposed it hadn't been a particularly deep question.

"What will happen when Metatron – when Marvin Doherty – disappears?" Castiel asked, breaking the silence.

Sam shrugged. "No idea. There are a lot of ways things could go."

"No. What happens to you, specifically?" The angel pinned him with a searching look, one that gave Sam pause.

"It depends," he said finally. "If there's a lot of noise there tonight and they can pinpoint that I was the last one to see him alive, I could probably lose my badge. Get arrested. Dean, too." Bela, he suspected, would either have a contingency plan in place or would end up in prison alongside them, and he knew which one was more likely. "But if things stay quiet...then I don't know."

"You don't have to risk yourself." Castiel leaned forward to rest on his forearms against the wall.

"I kind of do," Sam countered, mirroring Castiel's posture, folding his hands in front of him. "If I leave this to the FBI, or to anyone else – they can't touch him even if he was just Marvin Doherty. But if it's like you say, and he's an archangel…" Sam trailed off. "Real angels," he said, almost under his breath. "My brother always gets mixed up in the weirdest things."

"Yes." The angel sounded almost fond, and Sam could see a small smile curling the corner of Castiel's mouth before it vanished, along with the amused tone. "It's why Metatron is so keen to eliminate him."

"Because Dean stirs shit no matter what dimension he's in?" Sam allowed himself another small laugh, more at the words coming out of his mouth than his belief in them.

"Because Dean gets mixed up with me no matter what dimension I'm in," Castiel replied gravely. "And Metatron knows that the easiest way to get to me is…" Castiel shook his head. "You're in no small danger yourself tonight," he continued as smoothly as though that was what they'd been speaking of to begin with. "Not just of losing your badge, but because Metatron knows he can use you to get to Dean – and through Dean to me."

Sam swallowed. It hadn't quite occurred to him that in this multiverse theory they were working from, he himself would exist in other realities. Before he could form a response, however, Castiel's brow furrowed. "I do care about you for your own sake," he added hastily. "Not just because of Dean. You and I have been close friends as well. I just – Dean is…"

Sam smiled and looked out over the lit city. "I get it," he said quietly. "I'm married too, you know. I get it." He glanced Castiel's way; the angel appeared frozen at Sam's choice of words. "I mean, I'm not in love over infinite universes like you, but…"

"No," Castiel responded quietly. "Not infinite. But...in most of them you are."

The breath caught in Sam's throat at the answer to a question he hadn't even thought to ask. "What?"

"You and Jess," Castiel replied. "There are so many people that true soulmates are rare, but…" He raised his eyes to the clouded night sky. "Each instance of you and Jess are points on the same graph," he said in a musing tone, "and there are equations that define that cloud of infinite points. Those equations – those are your souls." He flicked his eyes back to Sam. "Most graphs only have the one equation," he said with a small smile.

Swallowing, Sam took a breath. "And you and Dean…?"

Castiel shook his head. "I don't have a soul. Things are different."

"So where are you in this extended metaphor?" Sam asked, curiosity winning out over politeness.

Castiel looked as though he hadn't heard Sam, gaze falling to stare resolutely over the rooftops, and Sam began to regret asking until the angel took a breath. "I'm his graph," he said so softly Sam almost couldn't hear. "His existence defines mine, and mine gives his context." A beat. "It's why we always find one another, despite my lack of a soul, even if we don't know we're looking. It's why, when I manifest in a reality, it's always nearby to Dean. Soulmates may live out their lives never encountering one another, but Dean and I are fated to be intertwined in some way in every reality I ever inhabit." He tore his eyes from their unfocused contemplation of the city lights to look back at Sam. "I've called it a 'profound bond' in the past. As a description, it falls a little short of the task."

Sam realized he was staring, and he blinked hard. "And...Dean knows this?"

"Most of it." Castiel looked down, laughter apparent at the corners of his eyes. "But Dean...has never been particularly fond of the notion of fate."

"You're not wrong," Sam said with a short laugh. He took a breath. "Do me a favor? Take care of him tonight." Castiel nodded and opened his mouth to reply, but Sam held up a hand to belay the angel's response. "He always took care of me, and once I showed him I could take care of myself, he started taking care of everyone else in this city – except himself. That, he's not so great at."

"I know," Castiel said, a smile playing at his lips. "I'll watch over him. And now we should pretend we've been laughing and joking, because he's about five seconds away." He pointed, and as Sam turned he recognized the shape speeding towards them.

Dean landed heavily on the rooftop, pushing the frames of his sunglasses up to rest atop his head. "We having a party up here?"

"One last hurrah before we go take on the richest man in the country," Sam said amiably. "Who also happens to be an archangel of unimaginable power from outside our dimension."

Castiel cocked his head to one side. "Not entirely accurate," he began, but Sam held up a hand.

"I know. I just – I can't cram any more multiverse theory into my head tonight."

Castiel's barely perceptible nod as Dean draped one arm over his shoulders acknowledged what Sam actually meant, and as Sam followed them into the stairwell, he allowed himself one small moment to marvel at the depth of emotion with which the angel must regard his brother.

And if he survived tonight, Sam would be certain to discuss the multiverse theory with Jess, if only so he could casually bring up how they had apparently fallen in love and would continue to over and over, until the end of time. It was an idea he rather liked.


	8. Chapter 6

FILENAME: CLOUDBREAKCAMA20140212

"Are these really necessary?" _The woman in the frame reaches up to adjust the glasses on her face. In the right-hand corner of the frame, text appears, identifying the speaker as LA FOUDRE._

"I can turn off extraneous information if it's distracting." _ENGINEER appears in the corner._ "But having eyes on the situation will help with coordination."

"I don't know." _The HUD identifies the speaker as DET W._ "I think just the earpieces are enough."

"This is kind of what he does, guys." _CLOUDBREAK_. "Come on, Ash, that's not my name."

"It is now. Cas, say something so I know the voice recognition is calibrated." _ENGINEER_.

"What should I say?" _ANGEL._

"Good enough. What do you say, ladies and gentlemen? Shall we begin?" _ENGINEER_.

"Let's dance." _CLOUDBREAK._

* * *

><p>Rain had begun to fall, a flat, cold drizzle that pattered softly against the carbon fiber of Dean's thrusters and made the lights of Mercer Island in front of him a smudged haze. He told himself this was a good thing: it meant that when Metatron tried to knock him out of the sky, he wouldn't be able to visually confirm whether Dean was down for the count. Ash had said he couldn't tell whether the electromagnetic pulse was an automatic response to detecting Dean's approach or if Dean's approach set off an alarm and Metatron triggered the pulse manually. Either way, Bela had been confident she'd be able to prevent Dean's detection the second time, once the wards were down.<p>

But first he had to survive the first approach.

"Are we in position yet?" he asked, more out of nerves than because it was taking longer than he'd anticipated.

"Just about," Sam replied, voice small but clear through the earpiece. "There's an electric fence a few yards inside the actual perimeter fence that wasn't in the schematic. Bela's disarming it without setting off any alarms."

Dean bit his lip. They hadn't even started and things weren't going according to plan.

"We're in," Bela said triumphantly. "Either Marv has issues with elephant-sized raccoons or he takes offense to uninvited visitors."

"Or political fundraisers," Dean said absently. "You're close enough?"

"Now I am. Keep the chatter down until I give the word. This is going to take some concentration."

"Yes'm. Going in." Dean took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment before leaning forward and engaging his thrusters.

The hazy lights of the island grew larger as he sped closer. Dean's stomach twisted as he approached; surely the EMP had fired by this point last time. Where was it? What was taking so long? Was it coming at all this time?

"Now!" Bela said, speaking through gritted teeth, and Dean's HUD fuzzed with a brief second of static as he let out the breath he'd been holding in anticipation. With a swipe at the screen at his wrist, he cut the power to his rig, rendering him theoretically impossible to detect.

He had what seemed like a very long time to ponder the wisdom of that as his forward trajectory turned into a familiar downward arc. With no way to tell whether Metatron was tracking man-sized flying objects or detecting the ionization from the thrusters, it probably was best to make Dean's power loss as realistic as possible – but it meant he'd be spending some more time in the water.

At least this time he was wearing a life jacket.

The water was every bit as cold as Dean remembered it, and he plunged deep enough to become quickly disoriented, but he had managed to control his fall more gracefully and had fallen from a much lower altitude. He bobbed like a cork to the surface, sputtering, and struggled with the switch at his shoulder that turned on a blinking white light.

He was not as buoyant as he would have liked, even with the life jacket, and the additional clothing he'd worn for warmth did very little while submerged in the frigid lake water. "Come on," he muttered, doing his best to tread water and keep his face above the waves as he searched around him.

It was perhaps five minutes, during which Dean felt the warmth leaching dangerously from his core, before he spotted the boat approaching. He raised his arms to hail it uselessly, as it was coming straight for him already, and with stiff, unresponsive fingers grabbed at the line Ash threw, hauling himself up onto the deck as Ash pulled.

"Clothes in the cabin," Ash said shortly as he hoisted himself back up to the cockpit above the cabin.

"Where's Cas?" Dean asked as he unbuckled his main thruster and levered it, dripping, to the deck.

"Flying a holding pattern," Ash replied in a shout from the chair. "You went down too close to the wards. We gotta back away a bit before he can come back aboard."

Dean wondered if that was by design, so that a second attempt to incapacitate and drown him would not be spoiled by Castiel's timely rescue. Stripped of the sodden clothing, making a soggy pile of it on the deck, Dean slid open the door to the cabin and escaped to the warmth within.

A brisk rub with a towel brought some color back to his skin, and with it sensation – Dean winced at the prickling heat of blood returning to his extremities as he pulled on dry versions of the clothes he had abandoned on the deck. They clung to his clammy skin and made it that much more difficult to manipulate them with his numb fingers, and he finally opted to wrap himself in the blanket and wait until he was drier to attempt anything more than the boxers and tee shirt.

Shivering, Dean looked up as the boat rocked, and a moment later the cabin door opened. He couldn't help the grin that pulled at the corners of his mouth as Castiel carefully negotiated the narrow door, folding his wings tightly against his back and shuffling sideways and ducking in almost comical contortions.

"You could have stayed outside," Dean pointed out.

"You're in here," Castiel replied, lowering himself next to Dean on the couch against the bulkhead. "And cold."

Dean didn't protest as Castiel very carefully unfolded a wing to drape across Dean's shoulders. It was still damp from the angel's recent flight, but warmer than just Dean's blanket alone. Dean allowed himself to lean into the odd embrace of it and close his eyes, taking deep breaths to calm his still-pounding heart. "Sam and Bela make it in?"

"Yes." Castiel reached up to touch his earpiece. Dean winced; he had the distinct feeling he'd lost his upon impact with the water, along with his HUD. If he wasn't careful, Ash would start forcing him to wear a granny chain to keep him from losing them with such frequency. "They're in the basement now, looking for the wards."

"Why do you think they'll be in the basement?" Dean asked, more to fill the anticipatory silence than out of any real curiosity.

"The energy of wards travels in a cone upwards and outwards," Castiel replied. "Holding circles, by contrast, travel up and down in a cylinder. You can place a trap on a ceiling and it will reach down to the earth as well as up; a ward will travel up and out, and the deeper it is placed, the larger the radius it can protect above-ground." He demonstrated with his fingers, splaying them to approximate cones. "A summoning circle travels out and down – which is why summoning circles work better on demons than on angels." His brow furrowed. "'Down' and 'up' are of course relative terms that don't have much to do with the actual direction of Heaven and Hell, since they're adjunct dimensions outside the manifold of mortal realities–"

"You saying we could have tunneled?" Dean interrupted.

"That would have been far too time-consuming," Castiel said, but the light edge to the words made it clear he knew it was in jest. "I'm concerned that he placed wards on every floor, in the interest of redundancy."

"Well," Dean said, noting that his shivering had reduced to mere goosebumps, "I guess we'll know soon."

"Yes," Castiel agreed. "If nothing else, I'll feel the wards go down."

"What do they feel like?" Dean asked.

Castiel considered that for a moment. "Have you ever been kicked in the testicles?"

Dean winced. "More times than I wanna count."

"Like that, but centered here." He tapped Dean's Adam's apple. "And here, and here." More taps at his forehead and stomach. "It's unpleasant. And at close range there is an almost physical barrier, just in case psychic pain isn't enough of a deterrent."

The motor of the boat sputtered and died, and Dean could hear Ash's footsteps above them. "We far enough away from them now?"

"We're close enough for it to be distracting." Castiel shuddered. "Their aura stretches halfway across the lake, and it gets exponentially worse the closer I get."

The weight of what the angel was saying battered a mote of comprehension loose from Dean's mind. "So – so when you pulled me out of the water a few nights ago –"

"I wouldn't relish the opportunity to do it again," Castiel replied. "But I would if I had to."

Dean fell silent, the magnitude of Castiel's words settling heavily in the pit of his stomach. "You really think I deserve that?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," Castiel replied without hesitation.

Letting out a long breath, Dean shook his head. "I owe you."

"It's not a negotiation or a settling of scales." Castiel reached out for Dean's wrist and squeezed it. "What I do of my own free will is for me, not to inflict the compulsion of debt on someone else." His grip slackened. "It took me a very long time to figure out what free will was and wasn't. I'm still not certain I know. But it's not a means to trap another." His gaze grew intent as it flicked up to focus on Dean. "And I hope you're not going into tonight thinking you have to because of what I've done."

Dean nodded, swallowing. "Not gonna lie, Cas, I'm doing it for you." He held up a hand when Castiel opened his mouth in protest. "And I'm doing it for everyone who was at the museum, and in the Westin tower, and everyone in all the other places Marv would hit if I didn't do this tonight. Because even if I don't owe you, I do owe them. This is my city, and I don't need a fuckwad like him messing it up." He squeezed Castiel's knee. "But I'm doing it for you because I like you."

The angel let out a small laugh, the corners of his mouth curling upwards in a way that lit a small twinge deep beneath Dean's ribs. "I like you too, Dean," he said warmly. The smile evaporated as quickly as it appeared. "That aside – or maybe because of it – I do want to impress upon you that you could die tonight," he said. "In fact, it's likely."

"What makes that different from every other night?" Dean asked simply. "I do what I do _because _I could die any day now. When I go out, I want it to be for a good reason, not because – because my lungs got too full of tumors for them to work right. If I get fried by the archangel terrorist I'm trying to take out?" Dean shrugged, his shoulders moving against the wing pressed tightly against him. "That's a good way to die."

Castiel didn't answer, except to reach forward to cup Dean's cheek in his hand and bring Dean's face close to his.

To say the kiss was slow would undermine the quiet desperation of it, the furious desire to stretch time and exist outside of the march of the clock. It tasted like a farewell, and Dean simultaneously wanted to break away and deny the necessity and lean into it and give it all the words that burned the roof of his mouth that he didn't know how to say.

He was saved from his indecision by a tiny voice issuing from Castiel's earpiece. "So, uh, you guys done yet?"

Castiel pulled away, startled, and Dean couldn't hold back a bark of a laugh. "Shut up, Sam," he said, leaning over to speak into the microphone in the earpiece. "What do you got?"

"We found two sigils so far. You were wrong, Cas – they weren't in blood. They were in ultraviolet ink. Hard to see."

Brow furrowed, Castiel thought for a moment. "For them to be this strong, there have to be more than four if they're not in blood."

"Ash," Dean said into Castiel's mic, "can the HUDs make out UV ink?"

"Working on it," Ash replied. "Patching it into Bela's HUD. Bela, did it work?"

"Yes," said Bela's voice. "But..." She let out a low whistle.

"Cas," Ash said sharply, "get up here and get a visual."

Dean shrugged out from beneath the curve of Castiel's wing and reached for the black canvas tactical pants folded on the table. "Go. I'll meet you up there." Castiel bobbed a single nod and made his way out of the cabin while Dean pulled on his dry clothes.

Up in the cockpit, Ash had arrayed a collection of tablets and laptops in a fair approximation of his control seat back at the apartment. The clear vinyl curtains had been drawn over the window holes against the chill wind, but Dean still rubbed his bare forearms as he ducked inside, pushing aside Castiel's wing to get a view of what they were looking at. Before he realized it, he'd mirrored Bela's whistle, and understood why Castiel looked so stunned.

Two sigils the size of a child's wading pool were crossed with thick black lines, exactly the way that Castiel had instructed. Two more sigils of similar size stood on other walls, almost lost amid an orderly pattern of thousands of identical sigils no larger than the palm of Dean's hand.

"Well," Dean said, licking his lips, "that's excessive."

"We're gonna be here all night," Sam said in a disbelieving tone. Ash had apparently sent a visual to his HUD.

"That must be how he made up for not using blood," Castiel said numbly. "Repeat it enough times and it doesn't matter what medium is used."

"Sam," Bela said, "get upstairs."

"What?"

"Get upstairs and shut the door. I'm going to try something, and you're just going to get in the way." At the thumping and scrape of her removing her earpiece, Ash began to protest, and through Sam's HUD, Dean saw her shaking her head.

"We can't be here all night. Sam, just go."

"Do it, Sam," Dean said into Ash's microphone. He watched as Sam sighed heavily and retreated up the stairs, shutting the door behind him.

For several seconds, nothing happened, and then Bela's visual was replaced by static. Sam's visual fuzzed with it for a moment as the lights flickered on momentarily before returning Sam to darkness.

"What –?" Sam threw open the door and descended the stairs in twos, emerging from the stairwell to reveal Bela leaning against a wall – a wall marred with a very regular pattern of burns.

"That should do it," she said, looking up at Sam – her eyes looked unfocused, but that did not mar the smug tilt to her head.

"What should do it?" Ash asked. "Your HUD is out."

"Oh." Bela reached up to tap the side of her frames with a finger. Her visual reappeared on the screen, and as it focused, Ash, Dean, and Castiel all let out similar sounds of surprise.

Each and every sigil on the wall had a neat line burned through it, and each one was smoking slightly.

"I had to throw them all out at once," Bela said, sounding more like herself as she straightened. "Didn't want to electrocute the good detective. Castiel? Did I get them all?"

Castiel blinked. "Yes," he said in mild surprise as he straightened. "It feels like you did."

"Then I think it's time you joined us." She tugged at the hem of her jacket slightly and offered her arm to Sam. "Shall we survey the rest of the house while we wait?"

* * *

><p>"You lose one more of these," Ash threatened as he handed Dean another pair of HUD frames and an earpiece, "I'm gonna make you wear a helmet with a face shield."<p>

"The Daft Punk threat," Dean said as he slid the frames onto his face. "Got it. All right. Bela, we're coming in – keep a lookout for another pulse."

"On it."

It wasn't far to the rocky shore of the lake – the pleasure craft Ash had borrowed had a shallow enough keel that he had been able to bring the boat close to shore, to minimize the distance Dean would be traveling with his thrusters. They'd considered pulling right up to the dock and dealing with whatever security detail they'd encounter, but Sam had quickly vetoed that idea and Dean had agreed – getting civilians just doing their jobs mixed up in the mess they were about to make wasn't right.

Dean focused on keeping his breathing slow and even as he and Castiel made their quiet way up the steeply sloped lawn to the house. Castiel moved next to him in easy, rolling strides, a gait both confident and threatening that Dean didn't think he'd be able to emulate if he tried.

They encountered the same fence that Bela had disarmed earlier, a waist-high chain link barrier that Castiel squinted at before nodding to confirm that it was still powered down. Even with that knowledge, it took considerable courage for Dean to place his palms on the edge of it to launch himself over, his heart pounding in his chest as his hands misinterpreted the cold of the metal as electricity.

The side door led into a mud room, mostly empty but for a single jacket on a hook and a pair of hiking boots. Dean reached out to touch the jacket, and he swallowed. "Jacket in the mud room is wet," he said in a low voice. "Don't think it's just us in here."

"No," came Sam's almost-whisper. "Bela and I heard someone upstairs. We think he's gone back to sleep."

"Metatron won't be sleeping," Castiel reminded them. "Be careful."

"Right. We're on the second floor. The entire floor is a library. It could have plenty of places to hide a sword. Cas, would you be able to sense it if you were close to it?"

"I would need to be within a few feet of it, but yes," Castiel replied, glancing around the dark surroundings. "Potentially."

"No need," Bela's voice sounded, and Dean did not have to know her well to know that she was masking surprise. "I've found them."

"Them?" Castiel asked sharply.

"How many swords did you lose?" Sam asked.

"No," Castiel breathed, and he nearly pushed Dean to the side as he hastened toward the staircase. Dean followed, taking the stairs two at a time as quietly as he could.

The second floor was completely open around the staircase, the walls obscured floor to ceiling with bookshelves. It was too dark for even the enhanced vision of the HUD to see the contents of the shelves, but the air had the same papery hush to it that Dean remembered from his infrequent forays into the college library years ago. Castiel was a dark shape disappearing into the black maw of two open double doors at the end of a row of bookshelves, and Dean took a breath and followed.

It was a study, of sorts; an old wooden desk stood in the center of the room, its back to a window that had dark green curtains drawn over the panes of glass. To one side, Bela, Sam, and Castiel stood in front of what Dean first classified as a gigantic wine cabinet, the pretentiously expensive kind with a sliding glass door and a wall of cubby holes. But as Sam swiped his flashlight beam over it again, Dean could see that the cubby holes were too small for wine, and the reflections that flashed back were too metallic to be reflections off glass.

"Those are all Angel Blades?" Dean asked in a hushed voice. Not every cubby was full, but at least a hundred silver handles glinted in what light managed to reflect from them.

"This must be why I haven't met any other angels," Castiel said in a low voice. "Metatron has killed them all." His eyes lifted to one of the cubby holes in the upper left corner. "That one. That one is mine." He lifted a hand to place on the glass, then hissed, pulling his hand back as though burned. "Warded. Of course."

"It's locked with a thumbprint scanner," Bela said, inspecting an inert black box mounted on the wall. "Give me a moment."

"Actually," a familiar voice rang, loud in the quiet dark, "I think I like everything exactly the way it is."

* * *

><p>Dean spun, drawing his gun from its holster in a motion that mirrored Sam, and trained the weapon on the shape that belonged to Marvin Doherty as he ambled into the room.<p>

"Nope." Marv – Metatron – waved his hand in a negligent gesture and the guns flew to the side as Dean felt an enormous pressure force him inexorably against the wall. He could do nothing but watch as Castiel let out a low growl and strode forward towards Metatron, who watched the advance for an entire second before holding up a hand to motion a halt. "Right there – wait, no." He shook his head and took a few steps, pushing insolently against Castiel's chest, sending him back one step. "There we are. Perfect."

And with a snap of his fingers, a circle of flame licked to life on the ceiling above Castiel, who stared up at it with infuriated defeat, closing his wings tightly against his back as embers fell around him.

"I forgot about the ten-foot wingspan," Metatron said in a mockingly apologetic tone. "Your cage might be a bit cramped."

"Thirteen," Castiel replied with a glower, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

The dancing flames lit Metatron's face with ever-changing planes of grotesque light and shadow, and he turned his attention to Bela. "No one ever looks up," he said to her, shaking his head in amusement.

"You burned down the museum," Bela replied, eyes narrowing.

Metatron took a step forward. "This isn't your fight. This isn't your _story_." He gestured at the double doors behind him. "I'm going to give you one chance to undo the mistake you made getting involved with the Winchesters. After that, I should make it plain that no one is leaving here tonight unharmed."

"Bela, go," Sam urged. "We got this."

Eyes wide, Bela sidled around Castiel, keeping her back to the wall until she reached the double doors. When she hesitated, Dean took a deep breath. "GO!" he shouted, and Bela slipped into the darkness outside the room.

Dean watched her go. She'd rendezvous with Ash, and they'd work something out. Or she'd high-tail it out of the country as fast as she could go. The latter seemed like the more likely option. She could be in Canada in two hours if she hoofed it.

"You knew we were here," Sam said, the nose of accusation strong and bitter.

"Of course I knew you were here," Metatron replied scathingly. "I know where you and your brother and his angel are all the time. I'm not a complete dumbass."

"So why not just torch my apartment building while I'm asleep?" Dean demanded, struggling uselessly against the invisible force that held him against the wall. "Why set traps, or follow me to museums, and fuck up other peoples' lives if you're just out to get me?"

"Because that," Metatron said, stooping to pick up Dean's gun, "is anticlimactic. It's boring. It's not a good story."

"Is that all you care about?" Dean demanded. "Stories?"

"Stories are all anyone cares about," Metatron snapped back. "And you –" he pointed the gun at Dean – "and you –" at Castiel – "always seem to want to ruin the one I want to tell."

"So leave Sam out of it," Dean said with a sudden burst of inspiration. "Pick your bone with me and Cas."

Metatron laughed. "No, no, see, that doesn't work." He sat down on the edge of the desk, ignoring an ember from the ceiling that landed amongst the papers there and began to smolder. "Dean Winchester cares about two things more than anything else in the universe. And that's how his story is going to end."

With hardly a change in expression, Metatron lifted the gun and squeezed off three shots.

Dean's anguished shout of "SAM!" drowned out Sam's alarming gurgle of agony as crimson began to run down the wall behind him, the three shots perfectly clustered below his throat, just above the top of his Kevlar vest. Rattling gasps made Sam's chest heave as he stared ahead, wide-eyed and growing deathly pale.

"One down," Metatron said cooly, putting the gun down on the desk and gesturing at Sam. He made a sweeping motion to a blank wall opposite them. Droplets of Sam's blood, sparkling in the firelight, flew across the room to the blank wall, spattering into a pattern similar to the sigils adorning the basement. "And one to go," he finished as he walked over to the sigil, dragging the edge of a letter opener over his palm as he went.

Castiel's wide-eyed gaze locked with Dean's, terror etched in every line of his face. "DEAN!" he bellowed, beginning to reach out towards him –

And Metatron slammed his bloody palm against the center of the sigil.

* * *

><p>Blind. He was blind.<p>

Dean reached up to rub frantically at his eyes. They were still there, everything felt normal, but all he could see, eyes open or shut, was a field of bright spots of green, as though he'd been staring at the sun. The flash of light, he reasoned, had been so bright after so long in the darkness it had flash-blinded him.

"Cas?" he called. "Sam?"

Castiel did not respond, but beside him Dean heard a retching noise, and he didn't realize he was on his knees until he began to crawl toward it. "Sammy," he mumbled, dazed. "Sam, I'm here."

Sam didn't answer, just gripped tightly at Dean's hand when Dean finally found it. "It's gonna suck," Dean rambled, "healing around bullets always sucks, but you've got exit wounds, so you don't have to worry about pushing the bullet out. It sucks, but you got this. You got this."

"Dean," Sam coughed weakly, voice thick.

"You'll be fine," Dean assured him. "Bad place to get shot, but the worse it is, the faster the healing – you'll be fine."

"Dean, I'm a cop."

Dean blinked, the blank green field beginning to slowly dissolve into dark spots. "What?"

"I started in narcotics. I've probably taken more bullets than you have." Sam coughed again, sounding stronger. "Why else do you think I'm so careful nowadays?"

Static erupted in Dean's ear and he swore. "Dammit, Ash!"

"Sorry. Something big happened there. Reset the connections. Are you guys okay? I'm only getting a reading from two earpieces."

Dean swallowed. "Only two?" He peered into the murk, trying to make sense of the study with what vision he had. He could still hear the snapping of the fire on the ceiling, still smell the bitter tang of gunpowder.

"Only two. Bela's HUD went out a minute ago. I assume she ditched it and ran." Ash sounded unimpressed. "But Cas's earpiece...I can't get a connection."

"Cas!" Dean called, louder this time, heedless of who heard him. He blinked harder, the ring of fire on the ceiling barely visible, and lurched to his feet.

"Dean," Ash said, voice empty, "he's not in your visual. It's just you and Sam."

Dean nodded to himself. "Okay, fine. Metatron – he ran, and Cas chased him." The words didn't feel right.

"You gotta get out of there," Ash said, ignoring Dean's assessment. "That fire's not catching yet, but 'yet' is the operative word. I'm gonna call the fire department in a few minutes and you gotta be gone by the time they get there."

Indistinct shapes began to emerge, still clouded with dark smudges in Dean's vision, as he made his shaky way over to the cabinet of blades. With a snort of contempt, he braced his elbow and smashed it against the glass. It took several tries before it shattered.

"Dean? What are you doing?" Sam asked from the floor by the wall.

"Getting what we came here for." It was this one. It felt right. Dean pulled the long silver blade from its cubbyhole and hefted it in one hand before shoving it through a loop at his belt. "Right. Let's move."

"I'm flash-blind," Sam said as he made his way to his feet. "And...this is not a good hungry."

"There's protein sludge on the boat," Ash said, "and I can guide you through your HUDs. I'm pulling in to the dock now."

Supporting a shaking, blinded Sam down the stairs and across the lawn was its own special challenge, even following Ash's navigation. Twice Sam stumbled on the uneven ground and Dean had to haul him back to his feet. He went down a third time near the electrified fence, which probably saved both their lives, because as Dean knelt to get him back to his feet, his foot hit something soft.

Something that protested in a murmur.

"Bela?" Dean demanded, blinking against the darkness.

"The fence is live again," Bela mumbled, her consonants soft. "Should've…should've checked."

Dean glanced at the fence and scooted further away from it, dragging Sam with him. "You okay?" he asked.

"'f course," Bela replied. "Electricity is my...milieu. Burned a bit, though." She held up a hand, and though Dean couldn't make out what she was showing him, he felt confident from Ash's hissing intake of breath that it wasn't good. "Deflected the worst of it. It'd have fried you." She pushed herself up slightly. "Where's the angel?"

Dean gritted his teeth. "We're not worrying about that right now."

"But –"

"He's not here," Dean interrupted shortly. "We are, and we need to not be." He nudged Sam. "Sammy? You hanging in there?" Sam let out a wordless moan, which Dean took to be more or less affirmative. He was conscious, which was more than what could be definitively said about Castiel.

No. He wasn't going there. He shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. "We gotta get moving. Can you disable the fence again?"

"Not without setting off whatever alarm it's connected to," Bela replied, shaking her head. "Electrical burns hurt. My concentration is shot."

"I don't give two shits about alarms anymore," Dean said. "Sam needs food, and you need a hospital."

"Oh." Bela glanced at the fence, and a bright arc of electricity danced between two of the wires. Dean shielded his eyes as the arc became brighter and somewhere beyond them, there was the pop of a shorting transformer. "You should have mentioned that before."

Once again, it was with trepidation that Dean touched the fence. Getting over it with Bela and then Sam slung across his shoulders was the least graceful thing he'd done that night, and it was with gratitude that he spotted Ash running up the lawn to help support Bela back down to the boat.

Sam was once again showing some color in his face, choking down his third protein shake, when Dean pushed open the door to the cabin and stepped out onto the deck. They were moving at a good clip across the lake, the wind and rain doing little to impede their progress.

Sam was safe. Ash would see to Bela.

Ignoring Sam's shout behind him, Dean kicked off from the deck, rocking the boat with the velocity of his launch, and sped off into the night. He had no destination, and didn't care where he ended up.

There was a feeling to an empty room, a subsensory knowledge that you were alone. It was a feeling that had lurked in the back of Dean's mind all his life, one that he hadn't paid much attention to until several months ago when it evaporated. Strange, now, that he could probably pinpoint the exact day it had left him, the same day he first saw black wings against a cloudy gray sky, the same day he felt compelled to reach to the clouds himself. The day his world filled up with what had been missing.

The world felt empty again, and Dean told himself that his eyes were stinging and his face was wet because of the rain.

* * *

><p>There was a surreal, dreamlike quality to the time immediately following a major personal catastrophe. It felt unsettling to move through a world that didn't share that detachment, who slept on as though nothing had happened. Dean hovered above the city, listening to the rain patter against his shoulders, wondering if the city would ever know what had just been sacrificed to keep it safe.<p>

Dean's thrusters weren't built for constant flight or hovering. They were intended for quick bursts to get him from point A to point B. Dean had learned a great deal about reserving their power and efficiency, and in the past few hours, he'd ignored it all.

It was useless, he told himself as he flew circles over the city, scanning all of their haunts, all of the locations of significance they'd shared. It didn't matter where he looked, he wasn't going to find what he was looking for.

Shouts below him, muffled by the rain that fell harder than the drizzle of earlier, caught his attention and he instinctively drifted closer. He couldn't tell if they were coming from inside the apartment building or outside, and then his uncertainty was answered by a door banging open and the fight spilling out onto the sidewalk.

There weren't even words as the man bellowed at the woman, and Dean's jaw set as the woman in the satin dressing gown cowered away from him. He landed, and either the man was too drunk or too enraged to notice Dean until Dean grabbed the man's wrist as he raised his arm to strike the woman.

"Turn around and go back inside," Dean said in a low voice.

"This is none of your business," the man slurred, trying to break Dean's grip.

"I just made it my business. Turn around and go inside."

Dean let the man shake his arm free. "C'mon, Pearl. You heard the man."

"She'll come in later," Dean interrupted. "You go in first."

"She's my girlfriend," the man said, puffing out his chest.

"You wanna take a swing at me, go right ahead," Dean said, positioning himself between the man and Pearl. Suddenly he wanted the man to have a go, wanted the rush of blood that would remind him that he could still feel some kind of passion. But the man just sneered and turned, slamming the door behind him.

Dean relaxed and turned. Having postured so effectively, he now tried to make himself as unintimidating as possible. "Pearl. Do you want to go to the police?"

"No," Pearl replied, eyes wide as she pulled her dressing gown more tightly around her. "No, he's just – he doesn't know what he's doing when he drinks, he's not normally like that."

Nodding sadly, Dean moved to the next phrase in the script he'd had to use far too often. "Do you want to go back inside?"

Pearl's eyes filled with tears as she looked up at one of the lit windows. "No," she whispered.

That was a surprise. Maybe she was closer to realizing the situation she was in than Dean had thought. "Do you have anywhere else you can go tonight? Friends, family?"

"I...there's a coworker…"

Dean nodded and fished his phone out of his pocket. "Call her. Will you let me walk you there?"

Pearl nodded as she took the phone. Dean moved off a few feet to allow her some privacy in her conversation, unbuckling his main thruster from his back and the stabilizers from around his wrists, and did not move closer again until she had hung up and looked around for him.

"Here." Dean shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her. "It's cold. Where are we headed?"

"Not far. She lives on Boren."

Dean nodded and let her set the pace, carefully walking just beyond arm's length beside her as he slung his gear over his shoulder. Every so often she raised a hand from within Dean's jacket to dash at her eyes or tuck one of her errant braids behind her ear.

"You're Cloudbreak, aren't you?" she asked suddenly, looking to the side at him.

To his mild surprise, Dean nodded. "I am."

"You kept my aunt from jumping off her roof," Pearl said softly. "Thank you. From me and her."

Dean swallowed hard. He remembered that night. Castiel had been standing by to catch her in case Dean hadn't been able to talk her down. "It's what I do."

"I thought the superhero stuff was all bank robbers and muggers." Her voice was less tremulous now as her mind focused on this new topic.

Dean shrugged. "No one robs banks anymore," he said in mild jest. "And it's about people. Keeping them safe. Looking out for them when they can't."

"That's...very good of you," Pearl said, and then shivered, pulling the coat more tightly around her. Dean wished she had some shoes. He hoped this coworker of hers would be able to take care of her.

The coworker was waiting outside the gated entrance to the apartment building, and enveloped Pearl in an embrace once Pearl had approached. Shaking more of relief than cold, Pearl handed Dean his jacket with a whispered "thank you," and Dean nodded once before turning on his heel and continuing up the hill.

His thrusters had enough juice in them to get him home, but it had been a long time since he'd walked these streets. The pavement beneath his feet felt good, familiar, and did not remind him of flying.

Ash was at his console when Dean opened the door. "Yo," was all he said as Dean shut the door, peeling off the dripping jacket.

"Hey." Dean ran his hands vigorously through his hair, scattering droplets. "How are Sam and Bela?"

"Sam went home," Ash replied. "Looked fine. Borrowed one of your shirts so the wife wouldn't freak out about the blood. Bela is…" he trailed off. "Not great. She'll be down for the count for a while. But she'll recover. Zappers have a lot of built-in insulation against that sort of stuff."

Dean nodded and looked at the screen Ash had been studying. "Tracking my GPS?"

"Wanted to make sure you were okay," Ash said neutrally. He locked eyes with Dean. "I'm sorry, man. I...just let me know if there's anything I can do."

Dean nodded, swallowing hard. He hefted the main thruster by its straps in one hand. "I need some more fuel cells for tomorrow night."

Ash's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "I'd think that, given the circumstances, you'd take some time off."

Dean shook his head vehemently. "The city doesn't even know how big a bullet it just dodged. Just because Marvin is gone doesn't mean people won't stop being stupid. Or needing help." He took a breath, eyes going to the window where the lights of the city glowed in its urban mosaic. "I gotta keep myself busy. And it's what I do, with or without...you know."

_He wouldn't want me to stop_, he didn't add as he leaned the thruster in its customary space against the wall. And, when he considered it, he didn't want to stop, either.

He needed some sleep.

After that, he had work to do. Just like always.


	9. Chapter 7

"Hey."

"Hey."

"So...Bela appropriated one of my drawers."

"Figured that's how you two were gonna end up. Congratulations."

"I'm still your engineer. Here every night you go out."

"Yeah, I...don't know how much longer I'm gonna do that."

"...Do what you gotta do, man. I'm here for you."

"I know. Thanks."

* * *

><p>The asphalt of the city was releasing the heat it had collected during the summer day back into the early evening. Dean spotted a bald eagle floating in the swells of warm air some distance off and grinned at it, setting his rig to hover above the Washington Mutual tower.<p>

"Hey, Kev?" he asked, shielding the microphone from the wind with his hand.

"Yeah?"

"I'm gonna cut you solo tonight. You got this."

"You sure?" His protégé sounded uncertain at the prospect. This was his third week in his own rig, and though he'd taken to flying like a duck to water, Dean suspected the younger man still didn't feel he had the authority to stop anything.

"Yeah. Go nuts. I'll be there if things start to get hairy." He switched to a private channel, one that Kevin couldn't access. "Ash. You busy tonight?"

"Bela's not getting back from her thing until one or two, so, no."

Dean raised a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose beneath his HUD. "Is Bela's Thing a Thing I should be worried about?"

"That depends. Are you worried about black market art fraud in Portland?"

"Just – keep an eye on Shortstop tonight, will you? I'm gonna go offline for a bit."

"Right." A pause. "You need anything?"

"Nah, I'm good." Dean shook his head to clear it, then lowered himself down to the roof of the WaMu tower. At the last moment, though, the soaring black windows of the Columbia Tower several streets up caught his eye, and before he cut his thrusters, he considered – then spurred them into full speed toward the tallest tower in Seattle.

He hadn't been there for months. Not since...well. He didn't like to think about it. Avoided it, when he could. There was nothing about tonight that should remind him of that short time – it was swelteringly hot, it had not rained in weeks, and after all, most of Seattle didn't seem to remember The Guardian Angel, anyway.

Dean set down in one of the rooftop gardens on the tower. It had looked different in the dark and wet of winter, all skeletal trees and forlorn topiary. The verdant green and bright bursts of clolor was enough removed from the winter garden in his memory that it did not summon forth the pang of loss he thought it would, and he sat on a bench as he fished in his pocket for the foil packet of Excedrin.

He swallowed the pills dry, wincing at the blossoming throb at his temples. His metabolism wouldn't let the drug work for long, but it'd give him an hour or so of relief, once it hit. That would be enough, for now.

That brought up another line of thought that he didn't want to consider, and in his attempt to subdue it, both painful notions he was trying to ignore sprung away from his control and he closed his eyes, letting them chase one another around his cerebrum, and as he felt the pills push their way down to his stomach he let out a whisper.

"Cas, I wish you were still here."

Right. That was all the self-pity he was going to allow himself. He took a deep breath, willing away the pinpricks at the corners of his eyes, and let himself relax into the summer breeze that had kicked up.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean's eyes popped open, his heart drumming against his ribs. His breath felt stuck in his throat as he twisted on the bench, and he blinked at an impossibility standing in front of him.

Castiel raised both hands from his sides in a sheepish "here I am" gesture.

Dean wasn't sure when he'd stood up, or how his knees even worked to get him across the space between them. The lump and burn in his throat was from the pills, he told himself. He wasn't crying.

He had almost thrown himself into the angel's arms when something stopped him short, and held him back almost as though something physically barred him from crossing those last few feet. "Cas…" He looked Castiel up and down, unable to identify what was different. "What...what happened?"

Castiel blinked. "What do you mean?"

Dean took an unconscious step back. "You're different. You're not…" He swallowed. "You're not the Cas I know."

Face falling, Castiel shoved his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. "I – there's a certain amount of time dilation that occurs when I'm not manifested in a reality," he said after a moment's consideration. "The farther I am from a certain reality, the more slowly time in that reality moves, and – it's not linear distance, of course, it's –" He reached up to rub at the back of his neck, a gesture more human than Dean had ever seen from him. "I've been far away," he finished, looking up plaintively, "and suffered the temporal consequences."

Dean's mind scrambled for a handhold in the flood of words that had left Castiel's mouth. "It's been six months," he said slowly. "How – how long have you been gone?"

Castiel swallowed. "A little more than four hundred years," he said finally, reluctantly.

"Four –" Dean turned. This was not happening.

"I tried to come back," Castiel pleaded, and Dean resisted the urge to swipe away the hand that the angel laid upon his shoulder. "Just – some realities are more real than others, and this isn't one of them. It's difficult to find. And the banishment –"

"As good as dead," Dean cut in. "That's how I've been treating you, for six months."

"Yes," Castiel said after a moment. "Yes. I know. And I'm sorry." He tugged at Dean's shoulder, and Dean allowed himself to be turned to face him. "I didn't want to – I knew you'd be alone. But until you prayed, just now – there was no way for me to find you."

"Right," Dean said, the sourness of the words curdling in his belly, "so for four hundred years you – what? Shacked up with other versions of me?" He winced inwardly at the pettiness that he couldn't seem to hold back. "Good way to spend the time, I guess."

"No, Dean," Castiel said, and in the moment they locked eyes all the subtle unrecognizable minutiae melted away, leaving behind eyes so familiar they made Dean's breath catch in his throat. "You. I've spent every moment with _you_. You just can't remember it yet."

Dean licked his lips. "It doesn't feel like it," he said. "So forgive me if I'm a tiny bit upset."

"I do. Of course." Castiel reached up hesitantly, tracing a single finger against Dean's cheek. Dean didn't flinch away. "Forgive me for failing you. Again." Castiel's eyes fell. "I seem to be doing that a lot lately."

Dean answered by pulling Castiel into an embrace he meant to be brief, but once the angel's arms closed around him he found himself leaning into it, all but staggering into it, eyes tightly shut and jaw clenched, face buried into Castiel's shoulder, one hand wound in the canvas of the overcoat and gripping so tightly Dean could feel his pulse in his knuckles.

"Dean," Castiel said, stiffening after Dean did not let go after several seconds. "Something's wrong."

Dean nodded, slackening his grip but still resting his forehead on the angel's shoulder. He didn't trust himself to speak for several moments, swallowing hard against the pills still making their way down his throat. "Heaven's real, right?"

"Yes. What –"

"And that's where I'm headed?" Dean interrupted, leaning away enough to look Castiel in the eye.

It was a mistake; from this angle Dean could see the realization bloom over Castiel's face, helplessness pull the corners of the eyes down, the lips part in an unvoiced gasp. "Dean?"

Dean tapped at the side of his head. "Right in the midbrain. Third ventricle. Headaches and vertigo are almost constant, now."

Castiel pulled Dean against him again; Dean let him. "Does Sam know?"

Dean nodded. "He's taking a leave of absence from work for a while. Spending some time with Jess before..." He drew a shaky breath. "They've got a kid on the way. God, for all their sakes I hope me being older than him means he's got more time."

Silence stretched for several moments. Finally, Castiel murmured against Dean's ear, "Yes. Heaven's waiting for you."

Dean let out a small laugh. "It nice there?"

"It's pleasant. I like it there."

"You're there?"

"I'm more or less a permanent fixture."

"Good." Dean took a long breath through his nose. "Maybe I'll get to meet all these other Deans you keep going on about."

"You'll _be_ 'all those other Deans.' You already are."

Dean didn't have anything to say to that. Eyes closed, he inhaled the scent that triggered a cascade of flashbulb memories, some of them on this very tower. "What happened to the wings?" he asked as he reluctantly drew away.

"They're still there." Castiel gestured and Dean turned to see their lengthening evening shadows stretching away from them, smiling slightly to see the shadow of wings unfolding from Castiel's back. "When I first came here, it was from another reality where I wanted my wings more than anything. This reality interpreted that rather literally." The shadow wings snapped shut, and Dean turned back to the angel. "One of the things I've learned in the meantime is that the wings don't necessarily make the angel."

Dean let out a small laugh. "I'll miss 'em. They were...interesting."

"I barely fit into your apartment."

The banter dissipated. There was still something there, a vague degree of separation, of distance that Dean didn't know how to reconcile. Castiel must have felt it too, because he didn't reach out to pull Dean close again, and the tiny smile as he looked down at his feet was sad.

"I suppose we'll have to start over," he said.

Dean opened his mouth to respond, to say that all they needed was a little time, but the words felt hollow and trite before he'd even said them. Instead, he glanced down at the display at his wrist, and felt a grin tug at the corner of his mouth.

"There's an altercation escalating at Fourth and Pine," he said, looking up. His thrusters hummed as he kicked them into standby. "Race you."

Castiel shifted in the unmistakable motion of unfolding his wings. "Do we get burgers after?"

"I'm game."

With a broad grin that Dean had never seen before on the angel's face, but that he could quickly become used to, Castiel launched himself from the roof. Almost, Dean could see the edges of wings as light refracted oddly around them.

Dean let him get a head start before sprinting to the edge of the roof and vaulting into empty space, hanging in the air for a brief moment before he fell, stomach flipping at the sensation. He let the rush of the freefall take him, watching the ground accelerate towards him, before kicking his thrusters into full throttle at the last possible moment.

His fate may be locked, his future certain, his inexorable march toward the end as unavoidable as the pull of gravity. So tonight, he'd paint the town red, live like it was the last night he was going to get, and know that when he went, he wouldn't be going alone.


	10. epilogue

**SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER**

MAY 4th, 2015

**HUNDREDS ATTEND UNVEILING OF MEMORIAL STATUE AT VOLUNTEER PARK**

Capitol Hill - Some of the crowd gathered yesterday at the unveiling of the park's newest statue knew Dean Winchester by name. He'd lived in Capitol Hill for many years, and was popular and personable. But even as a pillar of the community, it would have been strange to erect a statue in the young entrepreneur's memory if he did not also have another, much more well-known alias: Cloudbreak.

Until the vigilante hero's passing in November of 2014, the sight and sound of Cloudbreak and his jetpack was a reassuring backdrop to the people of Seattle. Cloudbreak devoted much of his spare time to patrolling the city streets at night, stopping crimes before they could become violent and working closely with the police to apprehend dangerous criminals. Since Cloudbreak began his patrols in early 2009, back then on foot and by car, petty crime has decreased in Capitol Hill and surrounding areas by more than 70%. The police department is more than willing to attribute that statistic to Cloudbreak's actions.

"He was an extremely valuable asset, and a great citizen," Seattle Police Chief Jody Mills said at the memorial's unveiling, "Not to mention a good person. We miss him to this day."

"Of course I miss him," says Detective Sam Winchester, brother of Cloudbreak and vocal supporter of the new initiative to further facilitate vigilante and police collaboration. "But I miss Dean more."

Also present at the ceremony was Cloudbreak's partner both on- and off-duty, known only as Guardian Angel. When asked if he thought the statue was a fitting tribute to Cloudbreak, he simply nodded and declined to comment further. This was the mysterious Guardian Angel's first public appearance since Cloudbreak's demise. When asked if he was planning to return to the skies of Seattle anytime soon, he cryptically responded, "No. Dean's in a better place now, and so am I."

The statue is a handsome bronze cast by local artist Charlie Bradbury, depicting Cloudbreak in his signature landing crouch. His sunglasses, which were actually a sophisticated data readout screen, are perched atop his head "where they almost always were, when he wasn't losing them," says Ashton Harvelle, longtime friend of Cloudbreak who was consulted for the design of the statue. "It's a good statue. I think he'd be embarrassed to know he's got a statue, but he deserves it. And he always liked this park."

Cloudbreak's statue can be found in its eternal vigil at the northeast corner of Volunteer Park in Capitol Hill.


	11. after the credits roll

The Skype call was obscured by static, but his companion's voice was clear enough. "I recovered them. Nearly a hundred. You send me the money, and I'll tell you where I'm keeping them."

"Bela," he said, and he liked to think that she flinched that he knew her real name, "You are a treasure. Pleasure working with you."

"I'm not working with you," she spat in reply. "You're just a buyer."

"Semantics."

Crowley reached forward and disconnected the call.


End file.
